Moving a step away from the club wielding creature I spun into a follow up attack which ran the other creature clean throw the chest. Using its body as a shield I blocked the returning club and ducked behind Castro as he faced the threat.
Covering his blind spot, I decapitated a troll and split a few dogs in two in quick succession.
I knew what was happening now.
[Survivor] was ramping up its involvement.
The pain in my arm sharpened my mind and instincts as I lorded an axe from a fallen soldier and used it to hack a bipedal creature with a turtle shell on its back into naked dismembered piñata.
Splitting the skull of a dog I hoisted the turtle shell into a shield grasp and slammed a bug creature into cricket mush.
The bone splinters were tearing my skin and muscles to shreds but I could feel the continued influence of [Survivor] preventing my arm from becoming obsolete. I needed that arm right now.
My instincts ran wild as a slashed and cleaved creatures on all sides with fluid lethality. Doug and Castro did their best to support me but near everything that dared approach found itself in a heap of gory corpses.
The death pile built up into a natural fortification which gave my allies more room to breathe.
Not that breathing was pleasant. Every exhausted gasp filled my lungs with the smell of blood. My own being distinctly clear.
I noticed in my periphery as Vir ducked an armoured arm of a troll before unloading a round directly in its head at point blank.
Calling for Castro I moved my unit closer to her and formed a circle around her as we fought.
At this point the entire unit's formation had crumbled, and small detachment were fighting desperately.
Four of us surrounded Vir and fought like hell. She constantly spun around to unload rounds in between the gaps, eviscerating multiple monsters at once.
I spun and slashed and cleaved and bashed and hacked without end. My lungs were giving out, my arm was all but destroyed, smaller wounds compiled into a harrowing image of a patch work man.
The others were no different.
Blood, our own and not, covered us from head to toe, but we fought brutally none the less.
Like a group of demons from hell we removed vast swaths of enemies from existence with cruel, desperate brutality.
This continued for what felt like eternity before our first reprieve arrived.
A cold, mind disrupting screeched filled the battlefield, ripping apart the ear drums of ally and monster alike. Blood gushed from our ears as we reeled, desperately trying to stand back up.
The monsters were no different. They fell and crowed and whimpered as the noise tore apart our minds.
I was the first to recover after my ears fell deaf from being torn apart.
I half hobbled, half leapt, onto the nearest creature and stabbed my sword through its neck.
I continued to hack at the deliberated enemies near us, even as I barely functioned. A few deaths later my team started to reorganise themselves, even though they evidently couldn't stand upright.
Vir didn't bother getting up though, she just flung her rifle around and blasted an monster managing to get back up from right where she lay.
Doug was the next to resume killing. His [Sea Legs] gave him a direct advantage to fighting with a lack of balance. With destroyed ears, everything that heard the screech could now hardly stand.
Doug tumbled and stabbed at anything near him like a drunk sailor on the high seas.
The screech we heard was undoubtably a banshee cry. We had only heard rumours of those before, but it seems we were unlucky enough to meet one. Hopefully the cry was its death cry.
An attack like that would deliberate everything around it so considering the numbers advantage the creatures have, such an attack wouldn't be beneficial to them.
That being said I wouldn't put it past one to do it without a care for its allies. They're really bad news.
Clambering to finish off another deliberated creature I catch a glimpse of hope itself in my hazy eyes. A creature near me was slashed by a standing warrior with a long sword.
Struggling to get higher than knee level, I move to support the warrior as he hacks another creature in two. I stab my blade through the chest of a troll trying to swing at the warrior from behind, ending its life a moment later.
Side stepping and manoeuvring around the attacks of fresh monsters filing in after the deaths of the fallen ones, the warrior positions himself over me whilst calling out to me.
I can't hear him. My ears are all but completely destroyed.
More warriors move in following him and protect my team who are effectively collapsing from wounds and mana exhaustion.
My own mana is all but depleted but [Survivor] is keeping me awake as long as the threat remains.
Soon an unfamiliar warrior who's face I can't even see properly grabs me and hoists me over their shoulder.
I see others do the same with my team whilst a strong force of warriors hold the tide back. With clear practiced movement and likely orders from whoever is in charge, the warriors and burden carriers move for Wesker at a brisk and bloody pace, slaughtering everything in their way.
I feel my consciousness fade as we approach the gates of Wesker, where the tide of monsters is thinner and the piles of corpses are far larger.
Noticing the lingering effects of [Survivor] fading I slip into unconsciousness as my burden carrier reaches safety.
*****
The last few years have both been trying and progressive.
We arrived in Wesker after nearly 8 months of hellish battles and stepping over the corpses of friends… family… and comrades.
After we arrived, I didn't wake up for an entire week due to my injuries. During that time Vir, who woke up after a day, ended up the main negotiator with the leader of Wesker and his retinue.
Vir told me it wasn't an overly difficult conversation. She just explained everything that had happened to her and I, as well as everything about Brund Morrows and how its fallen, to the journey here and how we ended up joining the battle.
It seems that in the absence of the late commander, Vir was temporarily instated as our commander in chief. The decision was primarily made out of necessity and urgency as Vir was one of the least injured and despite having a serious ear injury, she could still communicate through writing.
Through the conversations Vir underwent whilst I was unconscious, we were all accepted into Wesker as refugees without issue. Although only 76 of our original 2000 survived.
Over the following few months most of us recovered from our injuries without too many permanent conditions. As for myself, Vir and my team, we all made full recoveries.
As life went on Doug and Castro ended moving into a new military team called Rust. The team was named after there deceased founder who was a friend of the leader. Its purpose is entirely around defending the town and consists of nearly 15 000 soldiers. The two of them joined a unit that specialises in elite threat elimination during sieges.
Furthermore, since the battle where we ended up in Wesker, the viciousness of each siege started to minimise. The monsters' numbers gradually reduced some and Wesker's over strategies for defence were fine-tuned immensely.
Part of that fine tuning is a platoon named scouts. That is what Vir, and I belong too now as an elite two-man unit specialising in distant assassination. The job of the scouts is to hunt down stray creatures in the area and determine incoming signs of a siege.
Through this, sieges are identified early, and major threats are eliminated well before a siege begins.
During scout missions Vir does the actual assassinations whilst I am her guard. We often spend up to three days in the wilderness hunting monsters at a time. Any longer than that and we have to file a bunch of reports stating where we were and what we found. The brass like to be kept up to date and scout missions taking too long delays their pencil pushing.
Every kill that we get we are paid for with food and necessities after providing some kind of proof of the kill. It's not a perfect system to have but it gets the job done.
Things have been this way for the last 5 years.
During this time Vir and I have gotten a lot stronger, and our overall understanding of mana has improved drastically.
The town is now more like a city, with over 40 000 residents, which is all thanks to the development of mana technology.
We have batteries which store mana of specific elements as well as teams of engineers and mages which upkeep them. There are modified electrical systems which operate on lightning magic.
There are a limited number of streetlamps, but they keep major areas bright at night such as the market, the main roads, and the Den, which is the main entertainment district.
Currently I am moving through the Den to meet a client at a pre-disclosed location. He's a long-term client of mine whom I trust to keep a deal.
As I move through the narrow street cat callers reach out to me and try to drag me into their establishments. This isn't technically a red-light district but given how crowded the city is you can find a brothel or two on most streets. The Den is just the main entertainment centre.
The callers don't even know if I'm a man or a woman, as I'm wearing a scout's cloak which hides most of my body movements and blends well into the background.
They just know I'm a scout and therefore I get paid well. I have to be. No one would willingly go out into the monster infested wilderness without good incentives.