End of an Era (Project Chrysalis Book 2), John Gold [ebook reader online txt] 📗

“Life is fun when there are kids around like that. Anybody else?”

“There are two…professional killers, from what I can tell. They made us, too, though they didn’t ask anything openly.”

“Too?”

“The genius boy noticed us after about ten seconds just by looking around. The professionals made sure we were vulnerable to lethal force. We quickly switched that around, parting ways with pleasant smiles.”

“Ooph, it’s like the world is reacting to people like that. What about distribution? Did they all get dropped into different groups?”

“No, I stuck them all in the same one. Their group is a little smaller than the other three, and their chances of surviving are a lot lower. I figured you’d want to get rid of the problem candidate.”

“Nice work! But did you think about what might happen if they join forces?”

“No, they’re all loners. They have to fight alone, and they might even kill each other.”

“Phew, boy,” Urius replied, rolling his eyes at the people he had to deal with. “It’s constant battle out there, and they’ll figure out that they have to work together if they want to survive. Okay. They still have a chance. All right, let’s move out. Your job is to keep tabs on the trial. If anything out of the ordinary happens, let me know.”

Everybody got up and walked toward the portal. They had twenty-four hours of observation ahead of them.

***

The Black Rose was building up their city defenses in case the undead attacked. The clan’s main castle was in Congul, and that’s where the main wave hit them. There were only three alliances in the world who could stand up to the undead. Regardless of the 170-level difference, their warriors’ skills and continuous training paid off, and the clan officers, who Bernard had been working with for two years, were spectacular. Bernard had what the young gods didn’t: combat experience at a global level. His clan, however, was a drop in the ocean fighting the undead invasion, so their job was to harry the opponents in the rear, probe their strength in different areas, plan movement routes, establish escape paths, and find safe areas to collect resources.

An officer was reading a report.

“We decided to see how the undead would react to having their forces methodically slaughtered in one area. As soon as we liquidated all the usual undead, chimeras started appearing, with superior chimeric undead showing up when they started running out. Bernard, it looks to me like the undead are using bots to make chimeras, though their chimerologists only get to work when the rest of their forces have been cut down.”

“Makes sense. Necromancers, no matter who they are, can control a specific number of undead. The stronger the undead are, the harder they are to control. Undead respond to strength with strength; the harder we push them, the harder they push back. Of course, we could take out their front-line troops to get to the ones higher up and cut down on their numbers, but who’s to say that the necromancers won’t lose control of the situation? The monsters could rush the cities. We still haven’t seen bone dragons, great hounds of death, or mountains of death, and they’d take us out the minute we matched up against them. For now, we need to be leveling up and working on our skills so that we can be the vanguard in the deciding battle. If you can’t wait, take a few squads to a location far from the cities and cut up some undead. You’ll see something show up there if I’m right, and it won’t be the little junk that are running around now.”

“That’s worth a try. We can see how fast the chimeras and undead are created, and that would tell us both how many necromancers there are there and how strong they are.”

Bernard had already realized who the enemy was, and that knowledge was weighing on him. Standing up to the joint forces and undead army of the old small pantheon… Years would pass before people would stand together against their common foe.

Interesting times were ahead if the job at hand was to kill gods who had already left for the darkness…

***

I’m taken to a hill with steep approaches and a small, level plateau at the top. At the peak, there’s a view of the dwarf mountains and a plain, which means that we were sent north of Zirda to the mountains bordering the human lands.

How did they decide who would go with which group? There are around forty people nearby, though a good four hundred went into the portal. Where’s the equality? Although, the size of the groups could depend on their strength or the number of opponents.

Besides the plain, we can see the hills, clefts, and groves of trees scattered all around.

Three trial officers show up.

“You’re the fourth group. Your job is to get down from the mountain and kill undead for twenty-four hours, at the end of which, you’ll need to get back here. We’ll be watching how you do. You can kill each other, join forces, and use everything you and the rest of the group have at your disposal. What you cannot do is hide, though tactical withdrawals to gather your strength and eat are permitted. Remember, we’re watching. In fifteen minutes, a timer will start, so accept the invitation to the raid group and head down off the mountain.

It’s the first time in my life I’d been invited to join a group. A feel a nervous trembling in anticipation of the battle… Levels! I can level up!

“Your experience is unique to you, as are the things you get from the opponents you kill. The raid group is just a formality that won’t keep you from grouping up with each other—it just lets us know who’s died and where you all are on the map. You don’t