go

The crowd was heated up. The hooting and the chanting were the least of it. Whether it was the demons, the Earthlings of the Empire, they were all analyzing each and every moment, recording all the data they could for their own reasons. Earth's technology was subpar, as expected, but their application of it was interesting. The most interesting, though, was the way the soldiers fought.

Charging behind Alexander, they cut through the zombie ranks like grass. Once surrounded, they broke off into pairs, each wielding a sword and a shield. Each pair attacked and defended when needed, making up for their partner's weaknesses. It went beyond simple partnership – that was not something unseen in the universe.

The pairs used spiritual techniques one at a time, alternating between them, but it was almost as if each technique strengthened the subsequent one. It was as if the new technique was feeding off the remaining spiritual residue of the previous one, somehow increasing its own strength. But the accumulation had a flexibility to it that seemed almost impossible. The duo did not need to attack consecutively to gather energy – even if they used a defensive technique, it fit perfectly into the cycle of gathering momentum. It almost seemed as if the soldiers had an entire repertoire of techniques that fed off each other.

Finally, when the accumulated strength reached the limit of what the soldiers could maintain, they slashed their swords in the air together, releasing a blade of spiritual energy that traveled through the zombie horde, cutting them in half. As if that wasn't impressive enough already, the spiritual blades somehow didn't injure the other Earthlings at all.

At this point, even Anthony admitted that he had severely underestimated these specific humans. Their technology was backwards and so was their cultivation. Many of them were getting injured as they fought – a much shakier performance than the soldiers of the empire. Instead of fighting like one large, cohesive army, they were fighting in smaller, weaker units. Yet, despite all that, they were killing the zombies faster than the empire had.They employed a way of fighting Anthony had never seen before.

Recording them as they fought, Anthony was sure that when the experts of the Empire saw this footage, they'd be able to identify the underlying logic and create even better techniques. For now though, Earth had the lead in this new way of fighting..

While the soldiers fought in pairs, the golden boy of Earth – a title that he had officially earned now – Alexander fought on his own. Two of his blades were spinning like the blades of a blender at imperceptible speeds, mincing any zombies that tried to attack him from the back. The other four blades attacked the zombies at his sides, as if they had eyes of their own. In front of him, Alexander used his own sword to cut a path – though occasionally he would be overcome by barbaric tendencies and smash the zombies in his path with his free hand.

To the viewers, it seemed like an unending symphony. To them, he was dancing flawlessly, finding the perfect way to move in a situation where the slightest mistake would cost him his life. It was the epitome of elegance.

To Alexander, it was chaos. It was heat. It was loud. And it. Was. Bloody.

This was not the first time he had led soldiers on a mission, but it was the first time he was in a war. His mind was working in overdrive, not only to anticipate how the zombies would attack him and what he needed to do to retaliate, but also keeping track of his soldiers. He needed to give orders if their performance deviated, or if they were doing better or worse than expected. Yet, after a certain point, he could no longer keep track of the soldiers. As much as he didn't want to, he ended up making the decision that the best thing he could do in this situation was kill as many zombies as possible instead of keeping track of the army.

So, he went from doing his best to going beyond his limits. He was already using spiritual and body techniques at the same time, a feat that marked him on a level beyond genius. Now it was time to do even more.

His speed and strength suddenly increased, and the golden aura around him intensified. He went from reacting to the zombies' attacks to cutting them down before they could even make a move. With his blades in the air and his sword in his hand, Alexander attacked in each direction, becoming a cyclone of death and devastation.

Five minutes into the battle, the chasing soldiers finally caught up. As surprised as he was to see the situation, Crawford-41 did not waste any time in giving his orders. Like a charging cavalry, the soldiers crashed into the zombies that had their backs turned. Over a hundred zombies died immediately, and the remaining ones were only just beginning to realize that they were being attacked on both sides.

Alexander immediately felt the change, and dove even deeper into the horde, moving away from the relative safety of his soldiers. His efficiency increased, and now that he no longer felt overwhelmed, Alexander finally began to feel exhilaration. This is what he was searching for – to prove himself through fire and steel and war.

Amongst the bloody and ugly horde, Alexander suddenly caught sight of a single soldier in a familiar armor. It was the armor of the Jotun empire. Quickly, he realized that the empire had joined and passed new orders into his mic.

"Retreat and initiate tear down tactic 2."

With reinforcements grabbing the zombies' attention, he could take more effective and less dangerous methods of attack.

The battle was evolving quickly and before even realizing it, Alexander found himself fighting closely with that soldier. It was then that he realized, despite not having as many weapons as him, this soldier's killing efficiency was close to his.

As the soldier's two-handed sword cleaved down to split a zombie in half, one of Alexander's blades collided with it just a little, causing the blade to deviate. Instead of slicing the zombie in half, it only cut off the zombies' various tentacles, giving Alexander's blade just enough time to cut its head off.

The soldier looked at Alexander for a split second with a frown under her helmet, but didn't waste any time on him. She continued her attack, but quickly noticed that every time she was about to go for a kill, one of the flying blades just 'happened' to deviate her sword just a bit.

"What the hell are you doing?" she finally roared at the teenager, unable to keep her anger suppressed.

"Winning," was his one-word reply. He did not slow down his assault, nor did he turn to look at her. In fact, his killing prowess increased.

Cara ground her teeth as she stared at him like she wanted to slice him in half. She finally understood what was happening: he was preventing her from getting kills and stealing her points. Truth be told, she did not care for the points at all. But the more Alexander stopped her from getting them, the more she wanted them.

Tightening her grip on her sword, the lone soldier went on an absolute rampage. At this point, it seemed more like a competition between the two than an actual battle.

But the competition ended quickly. With the zombies diverting their attention to the new soldiers, the Morrison troops were able to retreat and got enough time to assemble and ready one of the heavy weapons they had brought.

"Tear down tactic 2 ready," Alexander heard a voice say in his ear.

"Take cover," was all Alexander said to the soldier, before leaping into the air to escape. Caught unprepared by the sudden action, Cara did not know whether to listen to the golden bastards' instructions.

That's when she heard the roaring, and leaped for cover.

Back at the Inn all the guests were once again filled with excitement as they saw all the Morrison troops once again connected to one another with blue spirit lines. But this time, instead of feeding the energy to 100 soldiers, it was fed to just one. The soldier, whose legs were bolted to the ground using tethers and plates dug into the dirt, pulled the trigger.

As the barrels started spinning it seemed for a moment like any other ordinary gun. That illusion was quickly dispersed the moment it started firing. Red spirit bullets started shooting out of the gun so fast, instead of a stream of bullets it seemed like the soldier was shooting a laser. At a speed of a little over 150 bullets a second, this gun, at the cost of a massive amount of spirit energy, completely eviscerated everything in its path.

The soldier was able to fire for almost two minutes before the strain of so much spirit energy coursing through his body made him collapse, but that was enough. Only a few zombies were left anyway.

Some of the soldiers that followed Alexander had died, many of them were injured and almost all of them were exhausted. Compared to the near peak state of the Jotun forces, their performance seemed pathetic. But that was only if you could not see the points board hanging in the air in the coliseum, which showed just how many zombies the army had killed in a little under 20 minutes.

Alexander and his troops regrouped while the Jotuns finished the zombies off. Other than Alexander, who was simply tired, all his troops looked beaten and battered. This was not to say that they were weak or inexperienced. Their equipment just didn't match up to the standard of the Jotuns, and their techniques, while ingenious, did not have the same spirit energy efficiency.

But despite all that, Alexander was quite satisfied. This had been a quick skirmish after a long chase, which gave them little to no time to prepare. When they attacked the main zombie horde, they would have better preparations. The only regret that Alexander had, other than his few dead soldiers, was that they were not able to attack Pramod. He clearly had escaped with the other group of zombies. By now, he had already joined the main horde.

Once the last of the zombies were finally killed, Alexander ordered his soldiers to retrieve the bodies for their soldiers. They needed to understand how they died, in case it was something preventable. In the meantime, Alexander walked towards Crawford-41.

Over the past day, everyone had already gained some idea of who the commanders of each army was, which is why Alexander knew exactly who he needed to talk with.

On the other side, Crawford-41 looked at Alexander with a mix of amusement and respect. Though there were areas in which they were lacking, this was probably one of the best performances he had seen from someone belonging to a Sky level civilization (a civilization unable to leave their star system). Not to mention, their killing efficiency was very high and their losses, considering their limited resources, were very few. That was where his respect came from. His amusement originated when he heard a report saying that Alexander actually tried to compete with Cara. Alexander could not be blamed for not knowing about the Deathsworn family, he did not have the relevant exposure. Still, considering the crazy and suicidal antics of the Deathsworn, it was rare to see someone even be in a situation dangerous enough to compete with them, let alone have the frame of mind necessary to compete rather than survive.

"Crawford," Alexander acknowledged the young man, approaching him. They were actually similar in age, with Crawford-41 being in his late 20s. One would think that with the background of the universe, cultivators would have already surpassed the Foundation realm by their late 20s, but that was not so. Unlike on Earth, where it was an amazing feat for Alexander to break into Foundation in 2 years, it was not considered impossible for the rest of the universe. They just simply didn't, despite being able to, because there was no real advantage to rushing their cultivation. It was a difference in perspective brought about by a difference in environment.

"If you're going to shorten my name, I prefer you call me 41," the man replied. "Did you encounter the armored demon?".

"I tried to intercept him, but they broke off. He's met up with the main horde by now."

Crawford-41 frowned. They had already failed one objective, which was not a good start. Then he looked towards the teenager. His previous golden aura had disappeared, and he could see a bit of fatigue in his eyes. They were technically competitors for the prize, but the main objective was still to destroy the nodes and this teenager had already proved useful.

With all of that in mind, Crawford-41 said, "You should check up on your soldiers. These zombies have all been laced with a special poison that makes even the slightest of scratches lethal."

Alexander grimaced and immediately passed on the news. All his soldiers who had been wounded were mostly suffering from blunt force trauma. The ones who had suffered scratches or bite were the ones that were dead.

He would have to change some of his plans, but that was for later. Currently, he came to Crawford-41 for only one reason.

"I don't know if you know this already or not, but the main zombie horde is massive. We are gravely outnumbered. I'm not sure of the exact numbers, but they range anywhere from thirty to forty thousand zombies. This is not a fight we can engage in alone, especially now that there is a demon capable of planning in charge of them."

Crawford-41 was not aware of this, but he only slightly frowned before his expression returned to normal.

"This is crucial information. We need to communicate with the other humans and beasts and plan an attack, but we can't waste too much time either."

"I have the means to communicate with the other Earthlings," Alexander said. "We just need to contact the beasts and hope they listen."

The two immediately started planning. Even though they were competitors, without each other's help, neither of them would succeed. Like this, another hour passed by before they were ready to lay siege to the main force. Alexander's army used this time to rest and recover their spent spirit energy. All was progressing smoothly, or smooth enough.

But as the two-hour mark approached and all the armies readied positioned themselves for the attack, something similar was happening on Earth.

*****

Zeus Leventis, a descendant of the Leventis family from New Las Vegas on the moon, stood nervously in the space carrier. Hovering silently over a mining facility on the dark side of the moon, the space carrier was one of many, each holding dozens of soldiers. The greatest irony of it all was that this particular mission was being overseen by one of Zeus' great uncles. They were attacking this facility not for the benefits it would provide, but to arrest control from the forces that occupied it. This was a strategic resource, the absence of which would cripple the economy on the moon. This was…

Zeus was woken from his daydreaming when the speakers released a very determined voice saying, "all forces, attack!"

As if a switch had been flipped, the night went from calm and peaceful to immediately being extremely chaotic! All the carriers open fired, not only penetrating the oxygen dome formation surrounding the facility, but the various outposts as well. The doors opened, and the soldiers jumped out, a jetpack accelerating their descent that was slowed by the weak gravity. The craziest thing was that despite all the chaos, it was eerily silent due to the lack of atmosphere. Except for the tremors that could be felt on the surface of the moon and the occasional flashing light of a grenade, there was no evidence of the chaos taking place.

Zeus also jumped and followed his team as they descended. He needed to get to a computer still connected to the interplanetary network as soon as possible. Deep inside his heart, he already knew that the network was likely already shut down by whoever orchestrated this attack, but still, he hoped. He needed to communicate with Alexander. That was the only way either of them would have any hope of surviving. Little did he know, Alexander was nowhere near Earth to begin with.

On Earth itself, the situation was both extremely chaotic and extremely peaceful. Various soldiers positioned in strategic locations began an attack at the same exact time worldwide. For some unusual reason, there was little to no resistance to the attacks. Dams, solar power fields, nuclear reactors and basically any kind of power supply stations worldwide were taken over and shut down. Government buildings were invaded with an efficiency that should have been impossible.

The few islands of resistance that could be found worldwide were mostly independent groups, caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Quickly, though, they too surrendered.

Most, if not all, nuclear weapons facilities were overrun. All nuclear submarines lost contact with the surface.

Before any of the soldiers left behind by the five family heads could use their keys and report the situation, they were killed. The precision with which each person loyal to the family heads, in possession of a golden key, was killed, spoke volumes.

*****

In London, in a quaint little house, there was a young girl playing games on her phone when suddenly she disconnected from the internet. She groaned and got up to reset her internet router, but suddenly her house lost power. Confused by the sudden development, the girl's mind had only just begun to think of possible reasons for why this could be happening, such as a broken wire to the main transformer or something, when one of her elder sisters barged into her room.

"Something is happening. I was on a call when I heard gunshots on the other side, and the phone disconnected. Then the electricity went out."

"We need to contact mom and dad," the younger girl was only beginning to say, when her second, and oldest sister walked into the room.

"No, in case of an unexpected development, we need to establish communication with the relay station and ask for instructions." her voice was cold and commanding, just like her eyes.

"Belle, what about big brother?" the young girl reluctantly asked, slightly afraid of the answer.

"According to our surveillance, Lex's location is unknown. He is most likely safe…" Belle frowned slightly. "He is most likely safe, but I'll request the relay station to send down some security. Dad won't like the interference, but if the situation is dangerous enough, he'll allow it."

"What about us?" the middle sister, Liz, asked.

"What about us?" Belle replied blandly. "First of all, we don't even know if something serious is even happening in the first place. And even if something serious is happening, these bodies are just spirit clones – even if they die, nothing will happen to us. Not to mention, their purpose has already been fulfilled. We only need to contact the relay station and act according to their orders."

Just as the younger girls were hoping everything was alright, the sudden sound of gunfire woke them to the truth. Then someone kicked down their house door and soldiers started pouring in.

It seemed that all of a sudden, Earth was in chaos. In the most well executed and efficient manner in the history of the planet, regimes fell and new rulers took their place. One would think that the ICPAs would resist the change, but ironically, it was the ICPAs that led most of the rebelling armies. With an in-depth understanding of the regions they policed, they knew exactly what to do to seize actual control rather than simply protect them.

At the rate that things were progressing, even though all the family heads' spies were killed, it would only be a matter of time till someone else with a golden key escaped to the Inn. Yet that was a matter for the future.

Right now, all eyes were on the massive screen as the first joint assault on the zombie horde was about to begin. Earth was in the lead with the highest number of points, and as for the person with the most kills… It was neither Alexander nor Cara Deathsworn. It was the soldier wielding the gatling gun – NPC1. But no one focused on him, or why he had such an unusual name. Their focus was on the fact that Cara had a total of 51 kills now, while Alexander had 53. Alexander had quickly taken the lead from her, and by denying her kills kept her total behind his. The audience had inadvertently dubbed the two rivals and could not wait to see how things continued.

The assault was not as coordinated as Crawford-41 would have liked, but the fact that everyone agreed to attack at the same time was already good enough for him. A total of twelve thousand five hundred going up against anywhere between thirty to forty thousand, not to mention less than ten hours left, gave them abysmal odds. He could not believe the Innkeeper thought such a difficult ordeal was a game.

To be fair, Lex himself was caught unaware by the number of zombies. When he was designing the games, he ensured that all zombies above the required level would be ejected from the game zone. Yet, while he tried to estimate how many zombies would be defending each point, he grossly underestimated the numbers. He expected that the devils may beef up defenses after they found out about the games, but this seemed a little too much. Fortunately, the game had an upper limit to the number of zombies based on the number of participants. Otherwise, if an army of a million zombies showed up in one of the future games… Lex shuddered internally just thinking about it..

As Alexander and his troops neared the zombies, he realized that the mass of zombies could no longer be called a horde. From a random mix, the zombies had turned into an organized fighting force. Zombies with long range were mobilized in the back, protected by several groups of zombies, with a clear advantage in close combat. In the air, massive undead birds circled as they kept a close eye on the approaching prey.

For better or worse – most definitely worse though – this was the enemy they had to face now. Still, everyone remained undeterred. As dangerous as zombies were, on the ladder of demons, they were at the very bottom – as Alexander had learnt in a crash course the Jotuns had provided him. Their individual fighting force was usually weaker than the average cultivator. So long as they approached this systematically, they could still win.

A green flare went up in the sky, indicating that the Jotuns had begun their assault. Unlike Alexander and the other Earthlings who planned on using long range combat to weaken the enemies, they directly charged in. Based on what Crawford-41 told Alexander, considering their equipment and training, the Jotuns were expecting to go through the whole games without a single casualty. The limited time was truly the only difficulty they faced in this war.

As advanced as they were, looking through a scope that aimed his newly assembled mortar, Alexander could not help but think the Jotuns were a bit pretentious. Why not use the advantage of technology?

He fired the first shot, using actual physical ammunition this time, which prompted several other teams to fire as well. The Earthlings watched from a safe distance as the first of their artillery hit the zombies and, with the energy of a bunch of teenagers playing video games at midnight, started taking more shots.

Even the 4000 other Earthlings were taking a similar approach. Under the supervision of a few soldiers who were also trained as spirit-tech engineers, the soldiers created a minimal version of a catapult. As primitive as the device seemed, its ammunition was the latest technology and pride of Uncle Sam.

They loaded what looked like a moored mine into the catapult and fired freely. Relatively speaking, the massive metal ball flying through the air was slow and easy to target, which is exactly what the zombies did.

Amongst the many other kinds of attacks, a bone-spike was the first to hit the metal ball, and instead of a fiery explosion, the ball burst into hundreds of smaller balls that quickly fell into the crowd. The zombies made no effort to avoid the falling balls as they lacked the momentum to be dangerous, and just watched them when they finally landed on the ground. For a split second, it seemed as if nothing would happen.

Then one of the balls released an annoyingly loud, sharp screech. As if activated by the sound, each of the balls suddenly absorbed a massive amount of spirit energy and launched towards the screeching ball, as if pulled by a magnetic force, and ripped through the zombies in their path. When all the balls finally reunited, they trembled, and then caused a massive spirit explosion!

The force of the blast absolutely eviscerated all the zombies within a hundred feet, and the traveling spirit shock-wave killed many more zombies by crushing their zombie cores with an overload of spirit energy.

Many things on Earth could be disputed, but no one could deny that the Americas had the greatest talent in making things explode.

On the beasts' side, similar to the Jotun army, they decided on an upfront charge. The elephants took the lead, breaking through the zombie ranks, allowing the rest of the beasts to attack freely. At a glance, there seemed to be little to no tactic being employed by the beasts. Yet the truth was, with their incredible strength and defense, this was their best play to begin with.

The wolves were close behind the elephants, and attacked with extreme prejudice! Despite lacking in technology, in the simplicity of their savagery, they were keeping up with the Earthlings in number of kills. In less than a minute, over a thousand zombies were already dead by the combined armies.

At the Inn, the mood was extremely positive, as humans and beasts alike rooted for those they supported. Despite their initial intimidation, it seemed like the zombies were bound to lose.

But as hopeful as Lex was that things would continue to play out this way, he doubted the devils would give up so easily. Perhaps if Pramod had not joined, Lex could believe that the trend for the battle was set, but he could not believe the devils had him join just to let the zombies be slaughtered so easily.

Without even realizing it, they hit the four-hour mark. At exactly this time, there was an announcement across the battlefield.

"Two treasure chests have been placed at opposite ends of the battlefield. Each chest contains 100 tokens that will be absorbed by the first 100 contestants to reach them. One of the chests contains tokens that will fill the owning participant's endless spirit energy and physical stamina for the duration of this match, while the others will give the owner a secret advantage during the next game."

The announcement ended as abruptly as it came, but the words had an abrupt reaction. The most immediate effect was on the soldiers, who were momentarily stunned by what they heard. But pausing in battle was extremely lethal, as the zombies did not bother to stop attacking, pushing them into a precarious situation. The second reaction was by the various commanders.

The repercussions of the announcement had varying levels of effect, not only on this game, but on the next one as well. Most importantly, endless stamina and spirit energy would allow them to gain a massive number of points, while a secret advantage in the next game would also put them at an advantage.

Almost as if it was rehearsed, all the armies immediately retreated. The announcement said that the chests were in opposite directions, but their specific location was unknown. Everyone sent out their scouts and drones. Even the flying zombies were sent out by Pramod to search for the chest. Only Alexander, who had satellites in the sky and got a live feed of the entire map, immediately knew where the chests were.

By the next game, everyone would know about his satellites and he would lose the advantage, but for this game, they played a critical role. Immediately he set out towards the nearest one, while pretending to send out scouting units.

Just as the mood on the battlefield had immediately changed, so too did the mood in the coliseum when a man covered in blood came running in, wearing a look of panic. He looked around till he identified Fateh, one of the five Nascants, and ran towards him.

The man tried to whisper but those nearby, as well as Lex who had the power of the Host Attire, heard him when he said, "war has broken out on Earth!"