As the scouts rose to their feet and faced off against Dave and his vanguard, he forced himself to remain steady and not back down.

Identify.

Amalia Rosario (Possessed), Lv. 8

Damn it, they really are being controlled—but does that mean we can save them?

The thing wearing Amalia’s body leaned in closer to Dave, leering at him. Obviously enjoying his discomfort.

“What’s wrong, soldier boy?” the thing said in a shrill perversion of Amalia’s voice. “Invasion not going so well? You want to run home to Daddy?”

Dave felt his stomach churn. This thing knew what Amalia knew. Its remarks were obliquely personal. Things Dave had only shared with those who had hunted with him.

He distantly heard the other possessed scouts making similar remarks to figures in the vanguard, but he was ill-equipped to understand some of them. And for the moment, he couldn’t look away from the eerie glowing eyes Amalia had affixed to his.

Then her hands were upon his. The skin was soft but ice cold.

Dave felt something being pulled out of him. His body instantly began weakening, but he felt powerless to resist.

Then he heard the sound of a sword singing through the air, and he saw Amalia staggering back. Her hands were still on Dave—he felt their cold grip almost to his bones—but he saw her wrists gushing thick spurts of blood where the hands had been severed from them.

Dave heard Sam’s voice in his ear. “Are you all right, Dave? Dave” The voice became urgent. “Say something to me, man!”

“I’m—I’m—”

Dave felt the cold fingers prying away from his body. He looked down and Sam was ripping the severed hands from his.

He could hear other people shouting.

“Healers to the front!”

“Need Purification now! Now, now, now!”

Dave found his voice, and he joined the group of those yelling. “Capture them alive! We have to capture them alive! Don’t kill the scouts. They’re just possessed!”

There was chaos all around him, as some obeyed his orders, while others had already begun attacking the scouts with uncertain but devastating movements. Dave saw a Mage’s staff crack John Carraway over the head, and the old man went down with an awful grisly smile on his face.

“Are you afraid to kill us, Dave?” the Amalia-thing asked, its voice cruelly mocking in his ears. “It’s the only way you’ll escape this place alive…”

The superior number of Dave’s forces began to get ahold of the possessed. Except for a few, like Amalia and Olivar, that had maneuvered out of reach, they were caught by the arms and legs and held down, hissing and biting their saviors, to receive Purification from the Healers.

Dave watched anxiously. As the Healers grabbed hold of the first handful of possessed with their glowing green hands, he sent a silent prayer out. The possessed screamed like demons. Then their physical appearances seemed to return to normal, as they collapsed to the ground, limp but still alive.

We should have brought more Healers, Dave thought. They had perhaps two dozen Healers among the hundreds of fighters they had brought. Almost all of their fighters had begun as Mages, with the exception of some Warriors like Dave who had specialized in Mana-related attacks. He had been briefed about what these spirit type enemies were like, and he had repeated the information he was given to his soldiers.

But hearing about it and seeing it were two different things. Dave saw the hope going out of some people’s eyes already. This wasn’t the harmless adventure some of them had experienced into the bats’ forest. There was no one-sided slaughter here, no simple opportunity to gain experience. Many of those here desperately wished they could go home.

He wanted to say something to inspire the troops and renew their hope. His mind started to formulate some generic words about fighting for home and family.

Then Dave saw that the true enemy had arrived. The words died in his throat. Flickering just at the edge of the space illuminated by magical firelight, there were figures with no legs floating in the shadows. Gently glowing, translucent specters.

Dave couldn’t hear anything from them or even clearly make out whether the figures had facial expressions, but he somehow had the sense that they were laughing at him.

Mocking all of the Fisher Army’s soldiers.

“Be on your guard everyone! They’re at the edge of our line of vision!” he shouted.

Dave began charging his pistol with Mana, readying it for the attack. To his surprise, someone flung a large bolt of lightning past his head and destroyed one of the creatures in a single strike. He turned his head and saw Mitzi.

“You’re not alone up here,” she said, giving him a little nod. “We’ll all fight until the end. I can already tell I hate these things.”

Dave’s first thought was that it was irrelevant how much they hated the creatures, because they had a job to do. But then he realized she’d made him smile, and the Mana seemed to be flowing into his pistol just a little more easily after what she’d said.

That’s strange, he thought.

When he briefed Dave earlier, James had said something about the creatures having an effect on the emotions of the humans around them, but he had been vague. Was this what he meant?

More figures appeared, but Dave fired Mana bullets, and more Mages hurled fire and lightning, to destroy them. Still others threw projectiles of water or earth, but it quickly became obvious that those simply passed through the monsters harmlessly.

“Keep up the fire and lightning!” Dave shouted. He used Command Presence, one of the abilities that came with his Job. It allowed everyone under his command within a certain area to hear him. Those who could not see what was happening needed to understand. “The water and earth magic doesn’t work on them. If you only have water and earth, save your Mana!”

Even the fire and lightning seemed to be of limited effectiveness, though. For every one of the creatures that silently dispersed, it seemed two or three more appeared. The edges of the firelight began to seem as if they were haunted by an army of specters.

“They’re behind us now, too!” a voice shouted from the back of the block of soldiers.

Dave’s heart sank, but he tried to keep up a brave appearance. It wouldn’t help matters to let them know that he was scared.

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“That’s perfect!” he yelled. “We can fire in any direction and hit enemies.”

They were just distracting us with those first attacks, so they could surround us and cut off our retreat.

An air of hopelessness seemed to have settled over the troops like a blanket as they realized they were surrounded. Dave felt it almost as a tangible thing, and he thought he could see the darkness actually creeping closer around them as the number of the enemy hovering at the edges of their field of vision steadily increased. He tried to resist the aura of despair with positive thoughts.

At least we’re not seeing the dead, Dave told himself. He realized that if the power that had created those apparitions was still active, the little army’s cohesion would have been utterly destroyed. Undoubtedly, his entire group would have succumbed to possession already.

This was only partially effective at raising his spirits.

There was a scream from the side of the group, then, and Dave’s head jerked back and to the left. He saw a young woman being dragged away from the rest of the block of soldiers. A spectral hand gripped her arm. Three fireballs shredded the figure pulling her away, and the woman stumbled back.

“Be on your guard!” Dave yelled. “Don’t let them get close!”

There was a rain of fire and lightning from the Mages in multiple directions as they tried to beat back the attacks from their enemies as the specters sporadically charged them.

Dave heard screams from the right side this time, and he turned and saw three figures being dragged off, two male and one female. The woman began to glow with green aura, and the hand that grabbed her vanished like morning mist.

Fire and lightning found the specter holding onto one of the two men, and he staggered back, relieved, as the creature dissolved.

But the other man was not so lucky. The lightning bolts missed the specter that held him and struck down a distant tree instead. They came so close that the bolts illuminated the man’s face through the encroaching darkness. Dave’s eyes widened as he saw.

Sam! When did Sam get over there?

He took a few steps toward that space and had to stop himself from chasing his friend into the darkness.

Then he heard Sam’s voice screaming—followed by a terrible silence.

The darkness seemed to grow just a little denser.

Then Dave saw a half dozen others armed with sticks and swords rushing toward the edge of the firelight to try and rescue them.

“Stop!” he forced himself to shout. “You’re doing what they want.”

Some grabbed for the would-be heroes, but three of them managed to rush out of reach into the darkness. Then their screams joined Sam’s tortured cries.

I don’t know what to do, Dave thought. What do I—

“More light!” yelled a woman in white armor who had stepped toward the front alongside Dave. “We need more light to keep them back!”

Dave turned his head and saw that the quality of the light around him had dimmed noticeably. He looked back and saw one of the Mages had collapsed to her knees.

“Sorry, everyone,” she said, breathing heavily. “Out of Mana.”

So soon? Dave thought. It was as if the air around the invaders was sapping their strength.

Mitzi stepped up and filled the air with even more light than there had been before. She conjured a dozen fireballs that she scattered even more widely than the previous flames had been. He heard her breathing heavily as she did this. He guessed she was also starting to get low on Mana.

The creatures seemed annoyed by the light and advanced more aggressively, pressing forward on all sides.

“Everyone, more light!” Dave yelled. “More fire and lightning.”

Mages who had been resting for a moment began chanting again, though there was an air of hopelessness about the whole thing.

Then the monsters rushed toward the band of soldiers.

As Dave fired Mana bullets at the enemies ahead of him, he heard the sounds of more of his allies being grabbed by those to the sides. Dozens of translucent hands began dragging people away from all sides.

“Hold tight, everyone!” Dave yelled. “Grab onto people—”

His words were cut off as a very tangible pair of arms wrapped themselves around his neck and placed him in a headlock. He recognized the pair of arms instantly by the fact that they had no hands attached.

“Amalia!” Dave choked out the name as he tried to fight her. But the body of his comrade seemed to be possessed of strength beyond what she could normally muster. She began dragging him away.

“You’re joining us, Dave,” she said, her voice full of sadistic glee.

In the corner of his vision, Dave saw Mitzi was being dragged off by another specter.

“No!” he cried.

“Oh, yes,” Amalia said.

He could only imagine how the group was breaking behind him. This felt like the end.

I can’t let this happen.

“I can’t go with you,” he said sadly. He pointed his pistol at where he knew her heart must be, and he pulled the trigger. Then her grip was broken. Her body tumbled forward, apart from Dave’s. He didn’t allow himself to look down. He knew that she was dead.

Dave started to turn back to his soldiers—still struggling valiantly to keep together and hold off the now hundreds of hands trying to pull them into the darkness—but then Sam lunged for him out of the darkness. Dave moved quickly and pistol whipped his friend.

Sam went down instantly, and Dave dragged Sam’s body with him as he rushed back to the group. He could tell that dozens had been dragged into the darkness, but the solidarity of the group was holding out.

Whenever the pull of enemies on one side grew too strong, Healers would rush over and expel the specters where they were thickest. The bodies of dozens of people lay on the ground. As he rejoined the fight, Dave saw people fall over from sheer exhaustion, while others toppled after having been possessed and having the spirits driven from their bodies.

“Keep going!” Dave shouted. “Just keep going!”

The struggle went on for what felt like hours, to the point where Dave couldn’t see an end to this.

Every time they pushed the specters and the possessed back on one side, every time they freed someone whose body had been taken over by a spirit, it seemed that on the other side, more humans were captured or collapsed. Every minute that passed, another human tired and stepped back or fell.

It felt like the cycle could only conclude in one way.

“Die, vile creatures!” There was the woman in white armor again, yelling and glowing with white light as her sword cut through the heads of a half dozen specters.

At least that’s one person who won’t give up, he thought.

Then Mitzi’s face leaped at him from out of the dark, expression twisted, a horrifying leer on her face.

She sank her teeth into Dave’s right arm, and he screamed and reflexively batted her away with the other arm.

As she staggered back, Dave saw Alan rush into the darkness after her.

“Alan, no!” Dave shouted. But he didn’t follow him. He needed to stay where he could be most useful.

He pushed more Mana into his pistol and realized with the sudden onset of a feeling of weakness that he had just emptied his Mana reserves.

No, I managed them so carefully, he thought.

He fired the Mana bullets he could into key areas where the thickness of the advance meant that he could not miss. Then he stepped back more toward the middle of the group, where he could evaluate the situation in relative safety. Dozens of people knelt, breathing heavily, trying to recover some small fraction of their Mana within the shell created by those who were still fighting.

Dave found himself slightly short of breath, too, now that his power had been expended.

Over a hundred other human bodies also littered the ground. Most of them had collapsed from exhaustion. Others were the possessed who had been purified. There was also a growing pile of those visibly possessed who had simply been knocked out.

We apparently don’t have enough spare energy to purify them anymore, Dave thought grimly. Sam was in that pile, and a few of the Warriors stood guarding it.

How can this end? He looked and saw dozens of faces in the darkness, those of the possessed and the mask-like images of the specters that sought to possess them.

He saw that Ramon Rodriguez had rejoined the ranks of the possessed after having been purified earlier, and it filled Dave with a sense of exhaustion.

Another pair of Healers stopped glowing and collapsed, and the front line of soldiers on that side began to recede toward Dave and the piles of bodies.

This is the end, Dave thought. He braced himself to hold onto as many people as he could for as long as he could. It was all he could do now that his weapon was useless.