{TIMOTHY’S POV}
Everything was changing around him so fast that Tim couldn’t keep up anymore.
[Demons], the overpowered generals of the [Monsters], who used to be just a drop in the bucket of the enemy forces, could now be found among the cannon fodder that even the weaker units were sent against.
More and more times active [Army] personnel had to get involved to save an overwhelmed [Human], giving someone equally powerful on the other side the excuse to attack an allied flank and incur even more casualties than that single [Human].
Speaking of casualties, Timothy's heart ached at the memory of Jack’s death: While not the first [Human] casualty, it struck harder than most when thinking back at how he had always been, at least in his mind, one of those undefeatable freaks of nature that always found a way to prevail.
Of course, personal might was irrelevant when a headless flaming centaur charged at you, with a horde of phantasmal apparitions at its heels.
The attack was unexpected and devastatingly quick, and yet Timothy could remember his comrade getting torn apart in almost slow motion, but with unsetting clarity and vividity.
The stuff of nightmares, really, but only the most recent and gory in a long string of near-losses.
That was probably why the [Army] had let the [Humans] integrate into their main force faster than anticipated, and why fighting had become increasingly frequent, as of late.
Another bad note was the escalation in the fights: Before, you had a day full of fighting, but then you got to rest and train for almost the remainder of the week; now, you had to fight for multiple days at a time, with a day of rest in-between max, if you were lucky.
And as a leader, Timothy Eggings had to deal with it all and more.
The recent uptake in stress didn’t break him only because he could share his woes with his experienced lover, and she in turn didn’t break because she could freely share her frustrations with him.
Truly, if he had ever lucked on anything it wasn’t getting chosen to survive the destruction of his planet, something that he had yet to get over, but it was meeting her.
“Tim, you’re twitching again”, and it was her voice that distracted him from his mounting panic.
“Sorry Eve, the stress was getting to me again”, Tim explained with a grimace, and soon after a soft and delicate form draped over his sitting body, further distracting him from the reports that made his thoughts spiral.
“I know, the situation isn’t the best, the [Demons] are acting decidedly more aggressively than expected, and the losses are disheartening; but look at it this way: This means our enemies are incredibly worried about something, and when you reach [Lvl 30] the rank of [Colonel] is pretty much yours.”
Timothy had been nodding along with her up to that last point, where an exhausted exhale forced his way through his mouth.
“I know you’re trying to cheer me up, but the rank comes with more responsibility, and that’s the last thing I really want to deal with now”, he knew it wouldn’t bring anything complaining about the responsibility of a higher position, even more so with someone that was the superior to his direct superior, but the mounting frustration had a way to pull the unabashed truth out of him.
“Then you want to go back to discussing your hilarious misconceptions about the female body?”
“Come on, I told you that I didn’t expect it to get fixed!”
“You didn’t expect that the [System] designed to make every race intermingle wouldn’t have removed that terribly flawed organic process that causes every woman of your species to suffer every month, and not only that, but you expected wildly different species to have it too?”
Tim could still hear her uproarious laughter from when he first approached the topic and they both received a packet of [Information] to explain where they both were coming from, not that the [System] vouching for his ignorance did anything from stopping Eve from teasing him about it on a daily basis.
“Well, you don’t have to put it that way…”
“And how should I put it then?”
“That your cute [Human] lover is still very ignorant of many things, and that’s why he’ll still need a trustworthy and capable mentor for a very long time?” He tried, with an awkward smile.
“Nice diversion”, she said appreciatively, followed by a wet peck on his cheek.
They stayed like that for a few seconds, until Timothy had to break the nice moment with what still weighed on his shoulders.
“Thank you for the distraction… huff, but this unexpected escalation still bothers me”, and it didn’t matter that people both better and stronger than them both were dealing with it.
“Then I have another idea on how to both cheer you up and make it up to you~”, Eve suddenly adopted a sultry tone, while her hands started roaming his body.
“You do?” Tim got out with a grunting gasp.
“Mhmh. It involves you, me, and that bed over there”, she got bolder with her exploration as she spoke.
“Well now, that just sounds like exactly what I need.”
* * *
{JEOFF SENIOR'S POV}
Something felt wrong, but for the life of him, the Jeofferneys’ Patriarch couldn’t find what was giving him this uncomfortable gut feeling.
Even the presence of multiple [High Priests], close to the sole reason why he had decided at all to ally his people with the lunatics, didn’t help much with his nerves.
The [Temple of Water] should be ripe for the picking, and yet everyone, including him, were simply surrounding the place without really acting on their perceived advantage.
His father hadn’t grown a coward, but he did have a surprisingly deep and insightful vision on ‘gut feelings’: One day, when the subject had come up long, long ago, Jeoff Senior Senior had told him “Gut feelings are just your brain relocating context clues that it failed to process on the spot, but did recognize their importance. In a mundane world, it is often theorized that that’s all a gut feeling would amount to be, a collection of conjecture and instincts that jolt a person to alert them, but in worlds flooded with [Mana] like here, gut feelings become almost as reliable as any other of your sense, and in some cases even more. So, remember son, if your gut is talking to you, you better listen”.
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
He almost wished that his father was still here, so he could ask him what to do when his guts ‘screamed’ at him, but then that would mean that he wouldn’t be the patriarch, and he couldn’t have that.
He had to make too many people disappear to get to where he was, and he refused to go back.
It wasn’t one of those ‘easy to decipher’ gut feelings either: No matter the course of action he mentally decided upon, the feeling remained persistent, neither abating nor increasing in intensity.
“The believers are growing restless: You will either order the attack, or we will do this without you”, a fellow [Earth Nymph] emotionlessly said from the side, a tiara of golden vines crowning his blank expression.
“Don’t think that you’re in the position to command me! I’m just observing their reaction… or whether there will be one.”
It angered him immensely that these crazy fanatics thought they could just order him around because they were the followers of the ‘chosen [God]’. But that only further confirmed that he had to reluctantly admit that his ingenious plan might not be as flawless as he had originally thought.
He had prepared plans and contingencies for everything he could think of, and he would have chosen which one to use based on how their prey reacted; except they didn’t react, and the [Temple of Water] seemed completely uncaring about being surrounded by what were clearly hostile forces, which, it turned out, was one of the few things he hadn’t prepared for.
“Your refusal to aid our holy cause is disappointing, and your reluctance to do your part troubling”, despite the [High Priest]’s statement, neither the tone of his voice nor his face, gave away that he was feeling anything at all.
“I’m not refusing to ‘do my part’, it’s just- can’t you feel it!? Something is wrong, and it’s almost like it wants us to know”, Jeoff couldn’t hide the feeling that was bubbling from within him any longer, and gestured angrily at the closed door of the [Temple].
“Growing cold feet, [Patriarch]?” the infuriating man did raise an eyebrow at the unexpected outburst, but besides that, every other part of him remained motionless.
“COLD FEET!? Are you seriously telling me that you’re not perceiving this penetrating feeling of danger!?” He didn’t know for how long he had been staring at the doors that looked like they were towering over him ever more, but when he looked back at the [High Priest of Purity], he was met with the first sign of emotion the man had ever shown.
Unhinged rage.
“The only thing I can feel is the cleansing flame of righteousness burning in my heart, and the disgust to the power from the false half-step divinity! We are the danger to their blasphemous way, idolatrizing invisible [Gods] who are clearly reluctant to interact with who they perceive as their ‘lesser’!”
For the first time, Jeoff questioned if throwing his hat in with this lot was as calculated of a choice as he thought.
Actually, when he thought about it, he wasn’t even sure how the idea to ally with the [Temple of Purity] came to be. Which was strange, since he remembers putting the safety of his son in their hands…
His son. Whom he sent off with a handful of servants and a sizeable group of those lunatics.
For the [True Gods]’ sake, he had allied himself with heretics! What was he doing!? What was he thinking!?
With a dawning sense of dread and horror, the Jeofferneys’ [Patriarch] watched as an army dressed in white and gold marched toward the [Temple of Water]. There he was, realization after realization crashing into his mind like flaming meteors, exploding his jumbled thoughts into a more cohesive mess.
And it didn’t take long for him to understand that they had been messing with his, and his people’s, minds since the very beginning.
Watching the retreating back of the [High Priests], Jeoff senior felt the uncomfortable feeling being replaced with a cold anger.
* * *
{THAT ONE [PRIEST] THAT STILL REFUSES TO REVEAL HIS NAME’S POV}
He finally felt like he could relax, the hold of the [False God] on the people’s minds lessening enough that those not yet its thralls would be able to escape the brainwashing.
The [Necromancer] already felt tired, and the fight was only about to begin.
He knew his actions would be enough, but now he could only wait and hope that things would go according to plan.
Throwing a look at the [Priests] around himself, he was caught by surprise when he noticed that they were close to gasping for air as if it would help with the [Mana Exhaustion] they were feeling after helping him with the ritual.
He could have done it alone, but their help was a safety net for if it ended up taking longer than he thought. Also, without their help, he would have been in a worse condition, and probably not as effective in the coming fight.
Once he made sure that everyone was okay, it wouldn’t do to leave those that remained loyal uncared for, he made his way to the front doors, more like an undersized gate, really, and found his [Cleaners] waiting for him.
Less than a hundred in total, they were the personification of ‘quality over quantity’: They were specifically chosen, nurtured, and trained to be the best of the best.
Of course, that didn’t make them homogenous in capabilities, even among them there were those one could either describe as ‘standouts’ or ‘strugglers, but they weren’t meant to be a squadron that could overwhelm enemies that outnumbered them more than 100 to 1, just they dagger normally hidden in the dark.
Actually, the ratio was even worse than that, but he was there, so everything would be fine. Especially since their [Patron] would soon be free to act directly.
“Is everything ready?” He asked, and a chosen representative immediately responded in the affirmative, “Then it’s time to welcome our guests”.
On cue the massive double doors in stone started swinging open on their own, and a group of people dressed in white, marching towards said doors, stopped for a moment in surprise, before resuming their aggressive pace.
“You’ve been disrupting our holy duties for a while now-“, he started to say, but unsurprisingly was stopped by who felt like a [High Priest].
“Holy nothing, you blasphemer! Your era of multiple false creeds is over, and now it’s for the true believers to step up and take what is rightful ours!” The more the brown-skinned Nymph talked, the more the skin on his face assumed a burgundy tinge.
It wasn’t clear if it was because he was getting angrier at every word, or if his already air-deprived brain was struggling to make him speak and walk at the same time.
The [Necromancer] shrugged it off, it wasn’t important, and instead moved along with his plans.
“Are you calling us blasphemers? Or everyone that doesn’t follow your [Demi-God]?”
“There is still time for those yet not under false mantles, but you, and all those like you, are beyond redemption and can only be purged from this plane beside your fragile idols!”
That wasn’t enough. He could think to poke him some more and see where it went.
“What does your [Patron] have against those that rose just like him, or its superiors, for that matter?”
“‘SUPERIORS’!? Nobody is superior to the [Embodiment of Purity], the [Walking Hollow], the [Arbinger of the Void]!!!”
As a [Human] would say: Bingo.
“Your entire order really does make it clear that most time stupidity is a choice”
“YOU DARE!?”
“Yes, I do. A [High Priest] like you should know that expressing outright hostility towards the [True Gods] is a one-way ticket towards [Excommunication]. Not only that, but you dared do it in front of the [Temple] of someone that ascended while being a [Protegee of Luck]”
The look of fury on the [Earth Nymph] went colder at every word, especially when [Excommunication] was mentioned, which was when their advance came to an abrupt stop.
“Lies. Those hypocrites up above don’t care about what we do here, down below. They don’t actually enforce shit!” Now the [High Priest] was trying to mask his fear with more anger, but it was hard to hide emotion for someone as experienced as him.
“You’re right, they don’t. Because they have people down here that do it for them. Quite effectively, in fact.”
Before they could understand his words, the humidity in the air rose sharply, and a thin coat of water started forming on the ground surrounding the [Temple], transforming the beautiful prairie into an ominous bog.
“What is this!?” Another [High Priest], for how stupid the concept was, said in a panicked voice, trying to step out of the rapidly forming puddles, but finding that the mater stubbornly refused to let his feet go.
“This is the power that [Demi-Goddess Undine] has been allowed to deploy through the authority of the [True Gods]”
By now they weren’t really listening to him, but instead, they were attempting to call upon their [Divinity]; too bad for them that it had been blocked from reaching them.
“You know, you gave some interesting [Titles], so I’ll share the one that our [Demi-Goddess] loathes to flaunt, but I think it best shows how bad the situations you are in is: she was known as the [Drowner of the unfaithful]. Do I need to say anymore?”
His tone was mocking, but how could it not? These idiots were drowning in their own incompetence, he almost chuckled at the unintended pun, and they couldn’t even see when it slapped them in the face.
“Jeoff, help us, you coward!” The original [High Priest] shouted at their backline, where more standard [Soldiers] waited uncomfortably.
The Jeofferneys’ [Patriarch] exchanged a look with him before speaking “I’m no coward, [Cultist]. I’ve just had my eyes opened, that’s all”.
Some tried the occasional attack on him to see if it would break the spell, but all it did was for a [Bloated Zombie] to rise out of the deceptively deep waters and bring them under faster than the rest.
[Temple] in front, hostile forces in the back, the last thing the [Priests of Purity] experienced was a lack of belonging and breath.