Gunfire ripped through the air, the sound of bullets colliding with – and shattering – golden scales resonating through the air. Florian watched as five of the beasts collapsed. Then it was another three, and then four after that. Before the monsters had even made it close to his group, half of them were dead. This group was skilled, even more so than the previous traders that he had traveled with. But Florian wasn’t going to sit back this time.

Summoning the lances of ice that Theo had been so fond of would have taken too much time. Instead, Florian pulled out a refurbished Bludgeon, flooding the weapon with so much mana that it radiated blue.

Florian was a force of nature, felling one wolf after another as they tried to make it past the bayonets of traders. He was halfway through his massacre when he heard someone scream, their cries quickly cutting out with a watery gurgle. Whipping around, Florian found that one of the wolves had made it past the line of bayonets, decapitating the poor man on the spot.

With a wolfish grin, the monster tore into its next target: a woman who was preoccupied with another one of the creatures. Two of his group had fallen already, and they hadn’t yet made it to Dover. Florian grimaced, sprinting at the Hellwolf. His left leg found a ruined piece of the bomber, and he tripped. He fell into a roll, and he managed to hang onto Bludgeon somehow, but the damage was done.

The wolf was able to cut the life of another trader short. Florian rose to his feet, and this time his feet did not fail him. He ended the monster with a single swipe of Bludgeon, its black ichor splattering all over the ground. Satisfied that it would pose a threat no longer, Florian returned to his task of ending the melee. He was successful, and not a single other trader died.

Jacquelyn strode up to him, her face painted with streak of black. She had been the only one of them, discounting Florian, that had slain a Hellwolf in the melee. “That was impressive,” Florian noted. The rifles were much shorter than the spears, and so getting a killing blow with one required practically shoving her arm in the monster’s mouth.

“Not impressive enough. We leave now; it was a mistake to come here,” she said, the girl’s shoulders sagging as if a great weight had been placed on them. A few of the other traders followed without a word, while a pair took pains to make sure that Florian knew that they were glaring at him. As a group, they collected the bodies of the fallen – both the traders and the soldiers from Dover – placing them in the bed of one of the pickups. They were to be buried at Dover.

The pickups roared to life, and they tore through the forest to arrive back onto the highway. Nothing had changed, and driving through the maze of cars still proved to be a test of his stomach’s ability to keep his food down. Luckily, Florian was preoccupied with the manila folder.

Like a child on Christmas morning, Florian opened the folder with great gusto. Within it, he found information about the mission. A brief scan yielded no extra information about survivors in the area, but he did find out that the bomber had been sent from a carrier somewhere out in the Atlantic. That was great news; there were organized groups of people out there that hadn’t yet been sent to the bronze age, for that’s what this was.

It also meant that maybe there was still a surviving wing of the UN out there somewhere. Another welcome piece of news. If they still existed, it meant that there might be a way for him to cross the Atlantic on one of their ships. Florian hoped dearly that whatever phenomenon that made all electronics fail or malfunction didn’t accidentally sink them.

Unfortunately, it didn’t look like there was much on the local population, giving him no clues about George’s family’s whereabouts. That was something that Faye would have to look into, using whatever methods she had available to her. He was absolutely certain that she had a decent idea of how to begin that search already.

The written mission read almost like the shittiest thriller story that had ever graced the big screens. The idea was to offload a nuclear weapon into the nest, destroying it along with a fair chunk of the city around it. Florian figured that the hope must have been that the nest would be significantly larger than it apparently proved to be. With that being the case, the explosion might have been better contained. Instead, it exploded and took with it a good portion of the city that had not yet been annihilated by the horde of demons

All of it was to ensure safety on the isles, to give it a sort of impenetrable wall between the islands and the mainland. The loss of people, of whoever succeeded in remaining alive to that point all, probably proved itself to be a cost that had prevented the governments of the world from agreeing to such a drastic measure. It was even noted in the file that the measure was seen as a last-ditch effort.

He was dragged out of his musings by sudden quiet. The rumbling of the engine had ceased, and it sounded doors were opened and closed. He looked up from his manila folder, seeing a familiar fortification standing proudly, but alone. It hadn’t been that long since he’d seen Dover, but it looked even more scratched up than before. He wondered if that was due to Hellwolves rotating from a nearby area, searching the abandoned castle for food. They had just begun to unload the pickups when they were suddenly interrupted by a chorus of howls. Florian looked up to the sky and found the Sun just barely over midday.

And so it started once again. Florian removed Bludgeon from his belt, but for this particular instance, he would run through his mana far more quickly than before, opting to instead create a single devastating strike.

Jacquelyn dropped the box she had been holding. “Everyone, act according to plan! Go to your battle stations!”

“Not this shit again,” Florian murmured.