I told Xana to get all of the settlers safely in the walls. I went out with my other avatar and the prismatic stars to do some last minute fortifications, making an enormous circular trench around the base. This was much deeper than the other trenches, with sharp rocks rather than spikes at the bottom, so if any zombies fell in, they would go splat. Next, me and my avatar flew up to the clouds, collecting as much water as possible, and bringing it to the bottom of the trench. Spinning faster and faster, using our cosmic elemental manipulation, we forced the water to spin around the bottom of the trench.

Soon enough, the water was rushing with a mighty roar. The zombies seemed to lack tactics beyond “hey diddle diddle straight up the middle”, so this ravine would act as a meat grinder.

“Unlocked cooperation level 1”

Almost immediately I felt it became easier to make the trench deeper and the water faster. I also felt like something else was coming, since the skill was resonating with James…

soon enough, the prismatic stars came into the trench to help as well, until the thing was 50 meters deep and 5 meters wide. The prismatic stars flew in formation, each one an equal distance from the other, almost perfectly in sync. I commanded them, correcting their positions just a little bit until…

“Unlocked command skill 1, command and cooperation have merged into the hive mind skill 1, hive mind has evolved into sidereal egregore due to class, sidereal egregore attempts to take control of host…

aw, how cute, it actually thinks it’s on the same level I am…

Sidereal egregore now regrets its existence

Sidereal egregore has been consumed by the James skill, James levels up”

James, what just happened?

“Well, you gained some teamwork skills, and those skills fused into another skill, which then evolved because of your class. Of course, this skill formed a skill spirit of its own, and tried to take over”

…?

“You know how I’m still a part of your soul, just with much greater calculation power and ability to gather and use information? Well, it was an egregore, or a psionic pseudo-soul formed from the minds of several creatures. It decided to try taking over our body, but it failed to realize that you already had a skill spirit, one of a much higher class and level than it was”

Well… thanks. I really didn’t think skills could take over the person… can you do that?

“Can your left leg take you over? You keep treating me like a full person, I’m not. I’m a part of you, just that instead of a limb I’m a personality attached to an intelligence. The egregore was more of a parasite, or a mind control virus. The only control I can or want to exert is the control you allow me”

… James

“Yes”

Thank you so much for keeping me alive

“You’re welcome”

Either way, I felt as if I was in several places at once, in the main body, in the prismatic stars, in each of my avatars, with Rock, with Xana, with the goblins, and even with the people that came from the streets and the hospital. I wasn’t entirely sure what happened when the world change, but I will protect those under my care.

Soon enough the zombies got within blasting range. Me and my avatar took point on both the east and west side, respectively, while the prismatic stars orbited from place to place. I fired sidereal blasts into the zombie horde like a machine gun, relying on my blood drain ability to make sure my SE stayed topped off. Oh look, sidereal blast leveled up again…

I’ll be honest, blasting waves of zombies to oblivion was getting pretty boring by the time the first demon showed up. By now, I’ve blasted at least a couple hundred thousand zombies, same with my avatar. I played around using sidereal blast as a beam to mow down lines of zombies, curving the projectile trajectories, firing it like a flamethrower or fire hose, etc… gaining another couple levels in it. I also leveled up cosmic elemental manipulation shortly after making that large trench, using it to make a few much smaller trenches to collect zombies for me.

Hell, now I was knee deep in corpses, and I could feel blood manipulation draining the corpses remaining energy away. That meant that the demons that I was looking at were in for a long, and exhausting battle.

“Hell squire: a demon known for its battle prowess. It lacks the commanding aura of its greater form, the hell knight, but it's well on its way to noble status among the demonic hordes. It was placed in charge of a legion of the damned 500 thousand strong. The fact that more than half of them were killed before it even reached the moat speaks volumes of its tactical and commanding ability. It has decided to face you in honorable combat, while its forces go around you.

It relies on its chitin plating for defense. Much like the armor of an insectoid, the hell squire’s armor is rigid and hard, covered in thorny spines. Its four separate arms end in wickedly sharp claws a meter long”

Its armor easily sustained several sidereal blasts, requiring a sustained beam using a total of 200 SE before it died in a polychromatic explosion. For a commander, it was pretty weak…

“You were training for over a week inside a time altered dungeon, having an inordinate amount of understanding with affinities, and have evolved into a species stronger than dragons. Make no mistake, they are not as weak as you make them out to be”

Then two more of them showed up. Oh, this is just great. On the bright side, more experimental test subjects.

This time I tried something new, using both hands to fire two sidereal blasts simultaneously. Of course, they brushed it aside like it was nothing, but sidereal blast leveled up, increasing my control of it.

So I prepared something else, a rocket propelled version of the sidereal blast, where the front end acted as a solid. This certainly gave it more stopping power, but it just deflected off the armor… perfect for my next experiment.

I tried using the principles behind a High Explosive Anti Tank warhead. At the most basic level, a HEAT warhead was a shaped charge that drove a spike into the armor. I could already form a solid blast, and a shaped charge, so sticking on on top of the other and…

In my hands I had what looked like a big floating spike. The bottom bit was rounded out, and mushroomed over the actual spike, holding the shaped charge. Shooting this at one of the buggers ended in driving the spike right through its armor, the instantaneous force of the explosion trumping the tensile strength of the armor, as if it was hammering in a needle, killing another demon. Now that I knew that worked, I killed the other demon in the same method, and received the information that sidereal blast leveled up twice.

My avatar also dealt with a few demons, still a bunch of squires, but squires always follow a…

Suddenly, all the zombies charged around is, specifically avoiding the zones where we sat down to defend. They tried climbing over the buildings and through windows, charging forward in a much sparcer manner, making it impossible to get them all. Looks like the commander planned to use a charge to overwhelm us.

Luckily we still had the ravine.

A few prismatic stars were still there, diligently speeding up the currents. As soon as the zombies stopped coming in, they flew out and let the fall, the rapids and the rocks do the rest. The zombies were running in too fast to actually stop, and it looks like their commander still didn't realize his troops were not reaching the base. At this point, me and my avatar went over to where we heard the roar.

There stood a hell-knight. It had chitin armor, like its squires, but compared to the squires blood red, it's armor was blackened and metallic. It had two arms, holding a bloody halberd, a skull affixed to the blade. Its faceplate had a vertical opening along the middle, showing two eyes stuffed into one vertical eye socket.

My avatar fired a sidereal blast right into its faceplate. Once the smoke cleared, it stood there, looking at my avatar, before sending a wave of black energy at it, completely annihilating it…

“I’d like to apologize”

I flew back, barely dodging another wave of darkness by using James to predict it.

“James, I hope you already started on that phase 2 you mentioned!”

Each shot missed me by a hair's breadth, sidereal affinity telling me how time, space, and even void seemed to be damaged as the waved passed…

“Look down”

I did. The streets were running with blood. I thought it was pretty normal, after all the zombies got demolished. Then I realized it was running uphill, towards the base, collecting in the trench and slowly crawling out towards the top of the tower, where the main body is.

“Ok, you’re collecting the blood for what I assume is to drain it away and use some kind of uber attack?”

“Close enough, but I’ll need you to distract the hell knight for a while”

Easier said than done…

Actually, it slowly became easier, each time it seemed to give up chasing me I would fire a few large explosives near it, wiping out a few zombies and flying away. Admittedly the ability to predict where the opponent would aim came in handy. It seemed the knight focused on extreme defense and offensive power, otherwise known as a mighty glacier build.

As you would expect from the name, its weakness was that it was terribly slow. After each swing, it needed to spend a lot of time to recover and wind up again, relying on its armor for the ability to survive long enough if it misses.

I slowly dragged it in a circle, across the area surrounding the base. Every time the thing attacked, a building would have a part of it carved away. Several buildings collapsed, buying me time as the knight had to get through the rubble. I would be tempted to kite it if it didn't have both the ability to nullify the damage I dealt, as well as the ability to knock me out of the air at a moment’s notice.

I leveled up cosmic elemental manipulation again, trying to make mazes, labyrinths, trenches, and walls to slow the knight down. Cosmic flight also leveled up a couple times with me continuously dodging the knights attacks, shifting gravity and wind to my advantage, speeding up and slowing time, blasting jets of water and fire to move myself just out of the attacks path.

Meanwhile, the blood began to accumulate at the top of the main tower of the universities ruins. It formed a massive black sphere, completely encapsulating the higher half of the structure, almost appearing as if it was an egg…

The Knight seemed to notice said massive egg, and immediately began his trek towards the base. No matter how many zombies I slew, he just kept running, jumping over trenches, climbing over walls and buildings…

eventually, I saw a strangely familiar figure in the distance, holding a familiar spear.

“Cid, entiendo que esto es una pelea entre comandantes, pero es simplemente imposible que yo me quede quieto durante todo esto”

Milesio changed a lot when I wasn’t looking. He went from under a meter tall to 2 and a half meters of pure muscle. His skin was black, lines polychromatic scales dotting its surface, and his eyes went from just emerald to a plethora of colors, shining brightly. He was holding my spear…

“Well, some of the zombies that fell into the ravine hit the wall and managed to climb back up, trying to reach the actual base. Guess who went out and dealt with them? Now he evolved into a Sidereal Trasgu, giving him a mayor stat bonus, as well as minimum sidereal affinity. The best part?”

Next to Milesio, several other figures appeared, each just as tall

“That the entire tribe evolved! And with sidereal egregore…”

The knight sent a wave of darkness their way, only for it to be countered as each of them worked together to make a black dome, a colorful constellation in the shape of a shield forming on the front.

“I didn’t even know it could be used that way…”