Harry met Brock’s eyes and instantly gave him a thumbs up. Hastily, the older man responded in kind before proceeding to drive his blade up through the jaw of a Spawn. Now that their group’s tank was here, Brock was confident that this battle was won, although there would undoubtedly still be casualties. There’d be less now, at least.

Grabbing the sharp blade of a mantis as it struck, he promptly tore it off and returned the favour, using the limb to bisect the creature and shower him in its blood. Brock spread his aura senses out and immediately detected Fon, who had forsaken the melee and instead taken a place upon the wall, joining the rain of arrows with her own ranged armament.

The knifeman became a whirlwind of blood and gore as he dodged, ducked, slashed, and incinerated. Dozens upon dozens of corpses piled up to the sides of the path he was carving through the insectoid ranks, signifying to all that he was not a man to be trifled with. Harry had instead grouped up with a small team in the horde and opted to fight alongside them.

Unfortunately, with the boy’s appearance as someone of a high level, he was immediately deemed a high-profile target and was beset with a singular unit of the camouflaged assassin. Brock only had enough time to see one of the people he was fighting with get run through before one of the very same monsters decided to assault him once more.

It seemed he too was deemed a high-profile threat, if only by the sheer contribution to the death toll.

This time, however, he was prepared, and his aura senses easily picked out the cloaked insect as it attempted to stealthily approach him and complete its assassination. Within seconds, Brock’s arm blade was glowing red hot and he struck behind him, effortlessly cleaving through the scythe that was aiming for his life.

The creature allowed itself no shock as it quickly followed up with another slash and Brock ducked under it and stepped into its guard. Grinning, his shortsword sliced upward, splitting the front of the monster in half and causing all of its organs to spill out atop him as it died and collapsed backwards.

He gagged from the suddenness of it and hastily did his best to dispel all the gore with a burst of his Augment of Skies. It did an admirable job, although he was still slick with red. By now, the surge of insects was left to its final dregs, only a half a dozen handfuls or so of them remaining. Even then though, they refused to cease their assault.

Brock glanced over at Harry’s fight, grimacing at the people who cradled the corpse of the man who was initially stabbed by the beast. Fortunately, the boy in question had already rendered the creature a mess of decaying chitin, chunks of meat sloughing off. It only took him one more strike with his axe before the monster literally fell to blackened pieces.

That leaves one more then…

The man observed the area with his aura senses and froze. He sucked in a quick breath. It was on the wall. Brock desperately spun around and spotted the creature just as its rippling form dissected a woman from head to toe, both sides of her body falling over each side of the wall and showering the earthen construction with her blue blood.

Before its savage scythe even touched the stone underneath it, Brock’s Skies infused kunai was already blurring toward it. The others on the wall just barely managed to realise the sudden appearance of the intruder when the dagger exploded through the killer’s forehead and promptly saw it being yanked off the wall and to Brock who was waiting down below.

The carcass skidded to a stop in front of him, and with one final yank, he removed his weapon from its skull, frowning as he shook off the pieces of brain. A single Swarm Spawn attempted to capitalise on his moment of distraction but was swiftly slain as Brock spun around and met it with a roundhouse kick, snapping its spine and pulping its organs. Blood spurted from between the cracks in its chitin.

The brutal battle only continued on for thirty seconds more before Fon pierced the eye of the final creature and finally brought it to an end. No one cheered, however, not even Harry. Quite a few people had died today, and as long as people were left to mourn them, it was never truly a victory. In silence, Brock met up with Harry and they walked back into the town as the gate was reopened for the vanguard’s return.

Quickly, Fon joined their entourage, and they assumed a position among the ranged combatants from the wall as they climbed down several ladders and waited in the street for their melee warriors to return.

Finally, as the last man came in and the gate closed behind him, Brock noticed the tenseness in the faces of those around him ease up slightly as they laid eyes on him. Automatically, he assumed the man to be either their leader, or strongest warrior, probably both. However, as he settled his gaze on the well-muscled man and his grown-out beard, his face fell.

“We lost a lot of good men and women today,” He began, regarding the group solemnly as the helpless town’s folk began to leave their houses and join the masses, “They will not be forgotten, and their sacrifices will not be in vain. We will survive another day.”

A silence of agreement followed, and he nodded sorrowfully, “The death toll would have been far higher, however, had these mysterious strangers not appeared and helped us. For that, we thank you.”

There was a brief pause in the quiet sobbing and grim speechlessness as many finally realised their existence. Brock didn’t blame them. Combat was a tumultuous thing, and it was difficult to keep track of everything happening in a battle at once. Even with his significant stats, he still struggled with it.

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Harry shrunk back at all the sudden attention and Fon put on her award-winning smile as she began to dismiss the praise in return for increased P.R., but Brock beat her to the stage of speech. He sighed wearily, “I’m really sorry about this…”

Brock walked forward toward the leader. The man furrowed his brows and opted to put out his hand for a handshake. Brock didn’t reciprocate it, and instead, his only arm whipped out - his blade already assumed – decapitating him just as his eyes began to widen.

At least he seemed to be a good person originally, I think…?

There were five seconds of deafening silence as everyone tried to comprehend what had just happened. Then all hell broke loose. The civilians screamed in horror and retreated back to the safety of their houses, the rangers and melee fighters adopted expressions of rage and hatred and immediately readied their weapons, cursing Brock out and snarling avidly of how they’d kill him.

“Wait!”

Fortunately, Fon rushed between him and them and they paused, many of the male warriors still foolishly holding onto the concept of not harming women, despite the fact that they were as deadly as anyone else. Brock applauded them for that at least. She only had about a second of their attention before they shed chivalry and chose to use it to direct their eyes to the corpse as she was pointing at it.

It had slumped to the ground messily and was beginning to slough into a puddle of bloody fluids. The tell-tale sign of a Skin Walker’s death. Brock heaved out a sigh of relief. It was always nerve-racking when he killed one of the infiltrators. He could easily detect that they weren’t human, but it’d be really bad if he was wrong.

Good to know that even this place has those fuckers though.

“Grant was… one of them?” the woman at the front of the crowd was the first to speak out, and the despair and dread in her voice was enough to make Brock wince. Should he have waited until another time? A… better one?

He almost chuckled. There was never a better time to murder someone.

Silence seemed to be a common theme today, as it once again fell over the town. Though this time, it wasn’t one of incomprehension or respect, it was simply because no one knew what to say. Their valiant leader had never even been real, instead replaced by a heinous monster even as he led them through thick and thin.

“…Apparently,” Harry commented, breaking the silence.

Brock pinched his nose, “You’re not helping mate.”

The warriors and rangers looked to each other, hidden but evident suspicion marring each of their lost gazes. The remaining flames of anger smouldered beneath. Brock sighed once more. He had expected this to happen. Any human with half a brain would see someone turn out to be one of those things and wonder who else could be one. If ‘Grant’ was one, what was stopping there from being others?

It was when people started to heft their weapons menacingly that Brock interfered and appeared in the crowd.

“You. You. You. And you. There.” Each ‘you’ was punctuated by the swift death of what looked like a human being. Soon though, their bodies began to melt, and everyone stepped back, avoiding both the corpses and man who had created them like they were the plague.

There’s seven more in the civilians. But the combatants should be clear.

“That’s all of them here. You guys are all good now, yeah?” Instinctively, Brock moved his arm and stump to gesture toward them as he finished his sentence.

They didn’t respond, just nodded and continued to stare at the new set of corpses.

Brock clicked his tongue and told Fon to watch them while he took Harry and ‘cleansed’ the town. It was an arduous process, taking about a half-hour. Most of the time came from dealing with grieving or frantic families, and a good chunk was from the chases that he was forced to engage in as the Skin Walkers did something new.

The moment he got close to them, they ran.

Now he was certain that their intelligence was increasing. When he had first met them, they would just transform the moment he discovered their infiltration and try to attack him, regardless of his strength.

Oddly enough, it also allowed him to realise that they possessed aura senses, or at least something similar. From what Brock had seen so far, monsters as a whole evidently lacked the ability to detect aura, only passively release it, so it was quite a feat that the Skin Walkers were able to. Whether they had gained it from those they had consumed, or if it was an innate trait was yet to be known, however.

In the end, he rid the town of the budding Skin Walker problem and left the clean up to whoever their carcasses concerned. Despite the fact that he had one hundred per cent helped these people, their grieving faces and pained cries upon realising the imitator of their loved ones refused to leave his mind. He frowned and tried to ignore it.

When he returned back to the battlefront, he found Fon readily discussing various topics with the protectors of the town. Many still had a look of listlessness on their faces or were silently brooding, but quite a few had tried to move on get acquainted with the small force that had inadvertently helped their town for the better.

It was those few that noticed him first as he approached and tried their best to appear unfazed by his presence. The rest were just too involved with their own problems to see him. Harry trailed behind him as he stepped beside Fon and waited for her to finish what she was talking about.

From what he could gather from her words, they were conversing about the state of supplies, and judging by the fact that the group used the word dwindling many times, Brock assumed their supplies were, in fact, dwindling. He wanted to help that situation, but he was quite frankly running pretty low himself.

Fortunately, they had appeared to have realised that monster meat was edible, and as there was plenty of it, hunger wasn’t an issue. Water, and the novelty of eating the same thing everyday was getting dangerous, however.

His own stocks would be enough for a few weeks for a trio of normal people, but with their growing metabolisms, he predicted three more days before he had nothing left to eat. Even then, they could go without food for a month or two without really losing all that much strength and stamina, but it would certainly be rather uncomfortable.

Soon, their designated speaker finished up the talk with the preposition of farming, something which would be quite difficult with the arid landscape, but probably possible if assisted by complimentary Ascendancies. The eyes of the men and women turned to Brock as Fon gestured to him and began her introduction.

“This is Brock Carter,” He nodded at them awkwardly, “And he’s the leader of our group. He’s also the one to ask about a solution to your problem.”

They glanced at each other, silently warring on who’d be the one to ask the scary, blood-covered man before them, until eventually a middle-aged lady gave a pronounced sigh and stepped forward, holding out her hand for a shake.

Brock could see the spark of respect for him in her eye, and smiling lightly, he gripped her hand.