The one drawback with laser beam was the lack of range. The thin beams lost cohesion at roughly 50 meters, dissipating into nothing. There were other striker powers with significantly longer ranges. Under normal circumstances Cechon would’ve had Kala switch him to one of those as he sprinted toward the bridge to engage the outworlders. If he had been close to one of the many remote Armory up-link hubs scattered strategically throughout their territory then a synergist wasn’t strictly necessary to access the powers.

As it was, Cechon had to make do with what he had.

Which was a superior stronghold to take cover behind.

“Braal, go to maximum density without sacrificing your running speed.”

“Understood,” Braal said.

A good member of a tetrastrike team didn’t question commands when in the heat of battle.

“Your shield and armor will be sufficient to stop the outworlders’ ballistic weaponry.”

Braal grunted and charged forward. Her boots left deep impressions in the soft, damp ground.

“Enemy in sight,” Braal said.

Cechon had fought with her on many occasions. He heard the smile in her voice that always crept in when she was in battle.

“Don’t deviate from your path under any circumstances,” Cechon said.

The outworlders heard Braal coming before they saw her round the gently sloping corner of a tree-like structure. The last cover before a thirty meter expanse of open space to the enormous bridge. They didn’t hesitate and their weapons began to bark a steady staccato of bursts.

Cechon stuck close to Braal’s heels.

He could hear the projectiles plinking off Braal’s shield and armor. He allowed himself to feel relief at his assessment that Braal’s thicker armor wouldn’t fail like Luun’s thinner one.

The two sentinels ran into withering fire.

Closer with each second.

The outworlders began to alternate fire as they took turns reloading.

Finally, Cechon’s faceplate indicated that he had reached 50 meters to the outworlders.

Three steps later he stuck his head to one side of Braal and let loose twin lasers from his eyes.

Aiming was easy when all he had to do was look at his target.

The beams burned right through the leftmost outworlder’s shiny, black chest armor.

The effect wasn’t what Cechon expected.

The outworlder ignored the sizzling holes in the middle of his chest and continued to fire.

“Strike Leader!”

“They’re dead— but they have heat signatures unlike the Kinarians.”

“Could be an outworlder thing. Infinite worlds means infinite varieties of lifeforms. Perhaps these ones are capable of surviving laser beams to the chest,” Braal grunted.

Cechon fired another pair of beams.

This time he turned his gaze slightly.

The beams cleaved through the rightmost outworlders’ left arm, taking the weapon along with the appendage.

10 meters.

The disarmed outworlder stumbled forward, which somehow turned into a charge.

What happened next defied Cechon’s long experience battling all types of monsters.

The outworlder’s body began to swell in size. Shiny, black armor and the clothing beneath ripped and tore as muscles grew grotesquely large.

Flesh followed to reveal bloody red muscles.

Through it all the outworlder didn’t make a sound.

“Engaging in close combat,” Braal said.

Cechon dived to one side as the outworlder, three times his original size, slammed a shoulder into Braal’s shield.

Braal was thrown back several paces despite an increase to her density that had her boots leaving deep craters in the stone surface of the bridge.

The monstrous outworlder chased after Braal, wildly smashing over-sized fists at her.

She was forced to crouch behind her shield, which was beginning to dent, as she scrambled to pull her rod free from its compartment.

Meanwhile, Cechon took cover behind a stone pillar on the right side of the bridge.

Stone chips flew as the second outworlder continued to mechanically fire his weapon.

Cechon waited until the outworlder was forced to reload. He stuck his head out and fired off a quick pair of lasers.

He aimed low.

The beams pierced the outworlder’s knee armor and sent him crumpling to the ground.

Energy reserves running low, Cechon drew his PDW and blew the outworlder’s head off.

Braal was having trouble with her opponent.

The massive monster battered her all over the bridge. Not giving her an opportunity to strike back.

A meaty hand grabbed the top of her shield and pulled.

Braal matched him strength for strength and the shield didn’t budge.

A second bloody hand grabbed the bottom of the shield.

Two against one.

There was only one possible outcome.

Her shield was torn from her grasp and went flying over the side of the bridge sending an eruption of water high up in the air.

Braal’s face was hidden behind her faceplate, but Cechon could picture the smile.

She gripped her rod in two hands and swung low.

The side of the outworlder’s knee buckled. Broken.

Not that it mattered.

The outworlder remained silent as he took a step on his broken knee, stumbled, but still struck out at Braal.

She slapped a hand big enough to completely engulf her head aside. Her density was at close to the maximum safe limit, which made her tremendously strong. Still, she barely managed to deflect the outworlder.

She lashed out with her rod. Smacking the outworlder across the jaw.

The entire lower portion of the outworlder’s face tore off in a disgusting gush of blood and saliva.

He didn’t react, make a sound or otherwise show signs of pain.

His grossly distended and swollen tongue lolled about as he continued to throw wild, grasping strikes at Braal. Blood and spittle splashed across her entire front.

She gave a silent thanks for fully-sealed combat armor.

However, she was starting to think that she’d have to render the outworlder into parts in order to finally neutralize him.

Her PDW was an option, but she didn’t have the time to swap her rod out. It was taking all her concentration to keep the outworlder from laying his enormous hands on her. She battered him continuously, but all she managed to do was slow him down. One would’ve expected that multiple broken bones and internal damage would’ve been enough.

Even with the increase to her body density, she wasn’t willing to risk testing her durability against the enormous outworlder’s strength.

Two red beams shoot out of the outworlder’s grotesque forehead.

Braal didn’t waste a moment.

She slammed her rod down on the same spot.

The outworlder tottered. Then fell.

Braal didn’t stop hammering until the head was an indistinct smear on the broken stone.

“Now what?” Braal said.

Cechon stared at the broken wall across the middle of the bridge. “We proceed.”

Elsewhere, deep inside the largest dwelling structure in the eastern half of River Town, the very place that the sentinels and their guides were headed, evil had found a home.

The Zombie Master stared at the bound Kinarians huddled in front of him. The pungent stench of waste and unwashed bodies filled the space, but a simple spell prevented the odors from bothering him. A necessary indulgence for though the man had found his passion in the manipulation and control of the dead he had a sensitive nose.

“That one,” he pointed at an older-looking Kinarian. One of his silent mercenaries stepped forward and grabbed the Kinarian like a small sack of oats before carrying the Kinarian to one of the side rooms. “And that one,” he pointed to a child, “and that one,” to one that appeared to be in her middle years.

After close to a hundred experiments over the past week he had grown confident in his ability to discern the ages of the Kinarians. The physical condition and coloration of their feathers was the key.

They went from soft, downy, without much color in the young, to harder, longer, brighter as they aged into their primes, then they lost color and grew sparse and wilted like flowers as the Kinarian reached the end of their lives.

“Return the rest to their enclosures.”

The remaining mercenaries didn’t hesitate at the command. They moved with mechanical efficiency as they herded the Kinarians away. There were faint whistles and screeches that he now knew to be signs of pain. His zombie mercenaries lacked conscience or concern. If a Kinarian fell they weren’t given the opportunity to get back to their feet. They were either trampled by the others or dragged along.

He went into the child’s room first.

The small Kinarian stared up at him with impossibly large, round eyes.

“You will be useful as an infiltrator or infection vector for other cities. If I can manage to tweak the formula so that you can mimic some basic life signs. Soft heart beats or breath. The warmth I can copy with enchanted heating items inserted below your skin. Thin cloth in places that others would likely touch?” he mused.

A soft, keening sound emerged from the child’s mouth as she shut her eyes.

“That’s probably for the best. If it’s any consolation. I’m not a cruel man. You won’t feel a thing,” he muttered words that the child didn’t understand, “Sleep. See, not everyone would bother wasting mana,” he said.

True to his word the Kinarian child didn’t feel a thing as he began to slice into her body with a scalpel.

First, he opened up her throat.

Once again he was struck by how similar and different it looked to a human one. Which made sense, since the Kinarians were capable of speech, like humans and were also capable of making bird sounds. He wasn’t an animal biologist so he didn’t really know or care about the details beyond a cursory look.

He took a small dropper filled with his modified copy of Blissful Purpose and liberally covered a wide area of the Kinarian’s open neck. He drew on his necromantic magic, connecting to the substance and the Kinarian’s flesh as the former was absorbed into the latter. Will and intent worked into the substance, changing it.

His magical instinct told him that he was on the right track.

Next he took a syringe of the substance and injected it straight into the Kinarian’s heart, then brain.

It didn’t take long.

He felt the child slowly die through their connection.

“The heart will beat,” he said firmly followed with words of power.

Seconds.

Minutes.

He allowed a small smile to grace his fine features.

Eventually, the heart began to beat. Faint, soft and too widely spaced, but enough to convince the unwary. After all, most sapient beings lost their objectivity when presented with a child in distress.

He judged that the melding of the Purpose and his dark magic would last for weeks. At which point the child would be just like the basic level of zombie until he infused her again.

He waved his hand over the open throat. A magical glow filled the small room as the flesh re-knit itself. He left the zombie child for now. He’d return later once he decided on a solution to the warm body issue.

The next room contained the middle-aged Kinarian. This one had a glazed look in her eyes. He knew from experience that he wouldn’t be able to pry any information out of this one no matter what carrots or sticks he tried. She had given up all hope and had retreated deeply into her thoughts.

The world in her mind no longer matched actual reality.

So, he wasted no time in injecting her heart and brain with Purpose. Death came and he went to work imparting the program, as it were, that he wanted her to follow. She’d be part of his horde of expendable soldiers in spreading the infection to other towns. His magic filled the dead woman, merging with the substance.

It didn’t take long.

Once he was done, he unstrapped the woman from the table and left her to shamble outside and join the rest.

The old man was last.

This one glared at the Zombie Master.

“I find it interesting that it’s either the younger ones or the oldest ones that display… bravery… the most.”

“Once our gods learn of the evil you’ve done here—”

He silenced the old Kinarian with a wave of his hand. Another simple, yet useful spell.

“So, I’ve heard. And yet, I’ve been here for a week, working my evil magic,” he smiled and revealed perfect, white teeth, “I would think that any being powerful enough to be considered a god would have noticed. Magic and power, like all energy, are beacons for those who are capable of using such. Maybe, River Town is too far away? If that’s the case then I have to question the power level of these so-called gods. Or have you considered that they know and they’re wary of me?”

What he was going to say next was forgotten when he felt of a spike of death magic flowing into him.

“Interesting,” he murmured.

It was magical energy he had expended to animate his elite guards. Two were no longer present in his consciousness. The ones he had left to guard the bridge.

The advanced zombie mercenaries had been destroyed.

That was the most likely explanation.

Zombies outside the range of his death aura required a permanent expenditure of magical energy to sustain otherwise they would become corpses once they ran out. The more powerful the zombie the greater the requirement, the quicker the drain. The simplest ones could last for months, especially if they went into dormancy.

He sent his will out to all of his zombies, elite and basic.

They were about to be attacked.