The motionless creatures ahead of them easily outnumber their group two to one. Causing a cold sweat to break out across Mark's back.
To make matters worse, they were still more than an hour out from their destination, and with the minefield they had just walked into, it may as well be days away. The only good news right now, was the fact that from here it was a straight shot to the bridge. Mark didn’t believe for a second they could get past this blockage without setting off the slumbering Corrupted. However, the further they could make it into the area without being detected the better their chances of survival would be.
There was no space for retreat, the only way forward was to advance into that mess.
Directly attacking them would just cause the Corrupted to evolve faster, but during the moment of awakening, they were vulnerable.
The mental network was alive with ideas and compromises. Questions blocked out any real constructive communication.
“How are we going to get past this? What do we do now? Do we turn back?”
Mark sent a pulse down the network and brought the Major's ‘voice’ into focus.
“Alright, listen, everyone, we are advancing. Silence is of the utmost importance. Jonathan, prioritize the creatures as targets, don’t let a single one go without having it marked. If they do wake up, that’s your signal to kill them to make us some room. Samantha see what you can do about the noise”
Davis ‘spoke’ next.
“What about the engines, their noise will definitely attract attention”
It was actually Henry that came up with the answer to this one.
“Turn them off and have the cars in neutral, we can have some of our Aura users pushing them. The busses will take more people but for a single car one person will do”
He was right of course, the strength given by the system was more than enough to push a hunk of metal down the road.
After a few more details everyone started to focus on disseminating the instructions. Mark made sure everyone under him knew to be silent.
For the first time since they left Prospect Park, their convoy came to a complete halt as whispers traveled down the line.
Gradually even the mutters of conversion slowed and petered out.
There was no greater motivation than the threat of imminent death, to silence the whole area.
Around two thousand people falling silent was an unnerving experience.
Engines were cut and those with enough attributes moved to support them, Mark saw Donny join a team to push the bus Abby was in. Firearms were stowed and cold weapons were drawn.
Less than five minutes later the Major gave the signal to proceed into the maw.
Mark had not expected this, an Influx was thought to be random or as a precursor to the forming of a Dungeon. But this almost seemed artificial. The mass movement of so many humans had actually caused a large amount of Corrupted to migrate into the area. As a direct result, an Influx must have been triggered. Their advantage had turned on them, becoming a threat to their survival.
The front of the convoy broke into the road and began to move down the warzone. So far so good, nothing was out of the ordinary as of yet.
Mark moved out onto the street and floated up to land on top of the bus. The one upside of this was that it had given them time to deal with the injured.
As more and more people streamed into the space the noise grew.
Not a single person said a word, even the children were silent at this stage, but the movement of hundreds of people was hard to minimize.
The drivers painstakingly directed the vehicles around the masses of Corrupted. Mark noted that not even the roofs of the nearby buildings were spared. Corrupted filled the space wherever there was open ground.
When Mark took a closer look he realized that the totems weren't only made up of humanoids. He saw the forms of Ghouls mixed into these creatures and sometimes even Ghasts, though they were significantly less.
Probably one in every five creatures had at least one Ghoul as part of its make-up.
Mark thickened the [Sculpt Mana] wrapped around himself, who knew what abominations would come out of these things?
More than half of the line had moved into the street. The totems luckily showed no signs of waking.
Everyone was tense, doubly so for their fighters. Each totem they passed had to be watched by a single fighter, if shit hit the fan and the order was given, it was their job to try and neutralize the thing before it could come out and cause a problem.
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As fighters passed, they could only leave their charge when another came to take over from them. So they were left playing the world's worst game of hot potato, until the tail end of the convoy could pass by.
Each second was excruciating, every stifled cough or hurried footstep left one wondering if they had doomed themselves. But still, they managed to put at least a fair amount of distance behind them.
Then the road began to narrow.
Vehicles began to struggle and whispered questions began to crop up. Soon enough the road was almost impassable, choked up by the Corrupted. Slowing them down further. People already shoulder to shoulder, had to squeeze past one another. Accidents began to compound and the noise rose.
Suddenly Mark noticed a large ball of air went up around Sam and silence fell over the front portion of the formation.
All at once, casters capable of air manipulation joined in the effort. The air around them distorted and the sounds of the convoy dulled. It was comparable to being underwater and while it wasn't perfect, it went a long way.
Luckily, air magic was one of the less resource-intensive magics because, at a certain point, it would have been impossible to progress without it.
Mark had joined the effort, using his construct to block out the sounds. His method wasn’t nearly as effective but at this point every bit helped.
Their pace was excruciatingly slow, causing them difficulty telling how far they had come, so to get a better view Mark rose above the surrounding buildings, as he did, he could see the opening to the bridge, closer than he had expected. He could even see an end to the Influx. Beyond the bridge, the distant gray of concrete took the shape of buildings. Squinting, Mark could also make out what looked like a monumental wall around the city. That meant other humans right?
Suddenly his eyes were drawn to movement up ahead, just before the bridge he noticed distant fighting.
He could make out the uniforms of their soldiers. How were they still here? They should have left this area more than an hour ago, something must have delayed them.
Mark couldn’t really tell what was going on down there, but their group was half the size it had been before leaving the base. Suddenly a massive explosion went off near them, giving them time to make a full retreat toward the bridge, but that wasn’t what caused Mark to despair.
The vibrations rocketed the area so that even those down on ground level could feel the tremors through the ground. A plume of black smoke rose into the air.
Mark watched as the nearest edge of the Infux was caught up in the shockwave. Then like a chain reaction, Corrupted began to ‘hatch’. The phenomenon traveled down the line towards them, each one waking the next.
Mark sent an image of what he saw to the network and dove headfirst towards the convoy, they had seconds.
A shout went up from the major, this time instead of being dulled, Sam amplified his voice, carrying it across the whole area.
“Attack!!”
While the majority of the fighters here weren't soldiers they reacted without hesitation. Laying into the nearest enemy.
Mark landed on top of the bus with such force it dented the metal inward. [Earth control] and [Force bolt] tore into existence, creating two large spears of Iron above his palms and a dozen bolts of semi-transparent energy surrounding him. With a short flick of his wrist, the attacks crashed into the three nearest totems, breaking them into crumbling, gooey masses.
All around people froze and watched in horror as the evolved horde awoke around them. Slowly Titans began to take shape. On the best of days, it would take at least three to five people to deal with one of these things, and that was with good coordination. The surrounding numbers right now meant that every person here would need to fight at least two. They were completely out-matched.
“Get these buses moving!” Mark shouted to the drivers.
The surrounding people seemed to snap out of it when they heard the order, charging forward, no longer caring about being quiet.
Engines roared to life, taking off as fast as the fighters infront of them could clear the space.
Mark's head whipped up to the roofs and he shot his spears towards two Titans that were still pulling themselves free. When they arrived they crashed through the creature's skulls, killing them. He ripped the spears back, only to build up speed once more and send them through two more Corrupted.
The spears traveled through the air with such speed and force, that the iron seemed to sing. When they smacked into a creature, a dull echo of metal on concrete rang out like some discordant melody.
All around them, the battle was in full swing, because of their preemptive strike, they cleared out a large space. But this was just the beginning, they used what breathing room they had created to begin forging a path forward. Skills and spells were thrown out in abundance, while low-caliber bullets came from any able-bodied man or woman capable of holding a firearm.
An angled construct dropped over Mark's buses, moments before bolts of acid began to rain down.
From the titans of all things. The Ghouls had given up their mobility in favor of merging with the resilient body of the Titan.
The Ghoul's head was sticking out from the Titan’s body, launching bolts of acid of its own accord.
The heads were never in the same location but often protruded from either the back or ribcage.
The Titan's biggest weakness was their inability to close the distance or a fast-moving target. Now, with the Ghoul's ability to spit acid, they became walking siege weapons.
The combination of the new enemy had them working on the backfoot because now, not only did one need to watch out for the Titans, but at any moment a bolt of acid could hit them at the wrong time and distract from the real threat.
The upside -if you could call it that- was that there was barely ever more than one Ghoul to a Titan.
When the Titans began to fall on their formation, it caused absolute chaos. Injuries were already trickling in.
It took Mark's full concentration to keep the Titans at bay and keep up some semblance of healing.
The bolts of acid were negligible, but the Titans were disruptive.
Every time a Titan came charging at the busses, Mark would make it his mission to put them down, opening as many holes as needed in their bodies until they stopped moving.
A Corrupted had tried to jump down from one of the roofs onto Mark's barrier. He had responded by whipping both spears around and merging them mid-air, reshaping them into a thick band of iron. Crashing into the Titan's waist, halting its momentum for an instant, before reversing and slamming it into the wall of the very building it had jumped from, pinning it there.
Then in the next moment, Mark had the iron reshape and whip up to the thing's neck, wrapping around it. Sharpening it into a bladed edge, and shearing the creature's head from its shoulders. Mark's understanding of [Earth control] and the Metal's malleability lent to the rapid growth of his control, and he would use every bit of it to these creatures away from his patients.