Gibson leaned heavily on the winged hilt of his sacred sword as he rested on one knee and waited for the fireworks. Though his features were hidden beneath his armor, his posture proudly displayed the role he was playing. The unspoken message was that as long as his weapon burned, he would keep fighting on behalf of the Lighthouse.

The Sword of Avenging Light was actually a Ghost Reef Standard Issue Sword, but through his mana it was noticeably enchanted. It became something completely different, greater than its basic form, like a relic of magical knights in the realm of fantasy. Subtle rings of blue-white illumination ran down the broad blade and circulated into the ground as if the mana that enhanced the weapon could barely be contained in the shimmering steel.

Wielding the enhanced sword like a beacon in battle made him the focal point of the local resistance, but he and his party were prepared for the task. They were reinforcing all those around them with passive buffs that defied expectations when unlimited by the system. The entire army was empowered when they fought with Gibson in their ranks.

Beneath his armored greaves, the thin layer of unignited pine needles covering the southern shore of Neptune’s Bridge was glowing from below. Energy was radiating from where he had jabbed the sword into the thinly covered limestone, passively spreading to cover a wide area while they rested.

The entire section of pine rockland was being consecrated by the divine power emerging from his blade. All those present were provided with some minor mitigation toward the passive influence of the Eradication Protocol so that they could catch their breath and observe the anticipated show while at ease. The sanctification spread across his allies in waves, boosting their resolve while slowly regenerating their stats.

The armor Gibson wore was also enhanced through his mana, modified from the crafted leather that had become synonymous with the Lighthouse. It was thickened and reinforced with his gently shimmering mana so that it transformed into a set of glowing magical plate armor appropriate to pair with his majestic sword. The whole design belonged in the type of fantasy books he read as a kid, adorning the valiant hero who would save his kingdom from certain doom.

Somehow, he had become the exact depiction of the paragon of justice destined to fight savage villains from childhood tales. When he lifted his visor with his gauntleted fingers, the thought made it so that he couldn’t hide the bewildered grin on his face. Despite the exhaustion that had built over months of non-stop combat, he was still enthusiastic about his newfound purpose. His own youthful imagination had come to life, bending mana to align insistent fiction with actual reality. In his opinion, this was the true strength of humanity. Their ability to dream was unrivaled.

Sweat dripped from his nose and he took deep breaths of the sulphur-tinged air, his whole body rising and falling as he filled his lungs. The last sprint had been a long one, but they had made it into position with plenty of time to spare. He ignored the sparse embers that drifted across the inland sea, the waters still mostly protecting Lighthouse territory from the main demonic army that sought to conquer them. They were all already fully aware of how much worse it was on the opposite side, where hell had risen on Earth.

Gibson welcomed the moment of rest for himself and everyone else. Even with his enthusiasm, he recognized the inherent limitations on his side. They were impossibly outnumbered and generally outgunned on an individual basis. They had no reinforcements but the demons they killed were always replaced. Even the atmosphere was their enemy, turned against them and slowly whittling away at their souls. The conditions couldn’t have been worse.

Less than three thousand defenders waited with him, already arranged into organized squads up and down the coast. They stood among the pine trees and palmetto bushes, waiting for the plan to come to fruition, understanding that their continued presence was so that they could act as bait for the demons.

They all watched as hellfire sparks were caught in the water, glowing as they sank into the depths with hissing steam, consistently drawing closer as the demons ate through the limit of Lighthouse territory. The defenders kept an eye out for forward enemies marching across the bottom of the body of water as they braced for the main event in the same fashion as Gibson.

Millions of demons squeezed onto the deteriorating bridge, rushing to cross, so eager to catch up to the humans who had tricked them and escaped from the settlement that they shoved their comrades over the edges and into the sea. All the rest of the residents defending Neptune’s Bridge had been transported back to Ghost Reef by sea, utilizing the still empowered navy to prepare for the rest of the apocalypse, but Gibson and the others were geared up and ready to continue a campaign through the Everglades to help prevent Empress City from being overrun from the glut of demons that existed to the north.

If the mass was allowed to suddenly join the battle, only a miracle would keep the next settlement from being wiped out. Instead, Gibson and the others were setting themselves up for a guerrilla campaign in the familiar wetlands. They might not kill all the demons, but they intended to destroy their momentum or die trying.

He glanced at his party, silently confirming that it wouldn’t be long. They nodded back at him, equally prepared for the marathon of combat that would come next. He counted down in his head, confident he had the timing right before placing both hands on the hilt of his sword to bolster his mana and overcharge his consecration.

He closed his eyes and started a long incantation, articulating specific words and phrases in a way that helped reinforce his mental focus. It was almost like Coop’s indescribable muscle memory, but more programmatic, immersing him in the unreality established with mana. His voice rose as his mana activated, imbuing his words with divine power so that they carried all the way across the army.

“Stand strong, my allies! Be shielded by the Light!” He finally concluded, his words echoing through the scattered pines like he was the main character in a theater play.

But rather than just messing around like some kind of dedicated roleplayer, he actually felt the energy physically coalesce, pouring from his internal mana pool into the consecration, then rising from the ground as it fully materialized. A transparent holy shield fully encompassed the humans, building a wedge a moment before the fireworks started.

“Brace!” He yelled just as the world shook.

A blinding flash erupted from the center of the already burned out ruins of Neptune’s Bridge. It was so intense, that even from behind Gibson’s barrier, they had to shield their eyes to avoid being damaged. The civilization shard’s initial explosion produced a massive burst of raw magical energy that shot from the epicenter, carrying the ashen remains of human civilization like a perfectly symmetrical expanding bubble that might never stop growing.

In a single blink, the surface of the sea transitioned from a steady dark red, reflecting the crimson haze in the air, to a white froth, centered from the explosion, expanding far faster than the speed of sound. The top layer almost seemed to boil off and be skimmed away, the energy accelerating faster than any physical distortion.

Then, the initial blast wave smashed into his barrier. It was a simple rush of heated air, but it was powerful enough to shatter the protective manifestation into tiny pieces. The barrier did its job and provided enough of a buffer for the warriors to withstand the marginal damage without fear, though it felt like a fighter jet had just flown right above them.

At the same time, the battered bridge, scorched and marred from years of fighting at this point, first during the assimilation, then during the Eradication Protocol, buckled. The alien stone shattered as it was lifted in the air and flung away from the city it had assembled, seeming almost weightless as untold amounts of energy erupted from the epicenter. Chunks of rock were twisted, melted, and launched high into the sky before they started a dramatic plummeting fall back toward the sea, trailing particles that evaporated in the air as they went.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

The scene reminded Gibson of the black and white videos of nuclear bombs being tested, but it was an energy blast that could only be created by mana itself. For a moment, the crimson sky became a maelstrom of flame and debris, illuminated by a temporary sun expanding from the center of Neptune’s Bridge while all the spectators were buffeted by waves of raw mana.

A buzzing roar shook the sea, the sound of the explosions finally catching up and reaching their ears, deafening them just as their vision finally steadied. Rather than the sound of another horrible enemy, it was the pure energy accumulated by the civilization shard being released all at once, cascading through the omnipresent mana in the atmosphere.

The sound continued past them, traveling much further than the blast wave, disturbing the rest of the floridian peninsula with a gradually diminishing rumble. Even those underground in Ghost Reef would have recognized the loss of the Neptune’s Bridge civilization shard as the whole planet shook. If anyone was observing from space, they would have seen the spherical expansion temporarily erasing the crimson haze blanket across hundreds of miles, centered where Lake Apopka had once been.

Even as the sound reached them, the whole outward expansion abruptly reversed, defying their natural expectations and proving the dominance mana had on their physical world. The light in the center dimmed, melding into a deep red as it revealed the beam that had shot straight up and disappeared into the sky, reaching the activated mana shield that trapped the violence on Earth. The spotlight was already fading by the time it was visible inside the turmoil.

The disintegrating debris of the steadfast city that had been sent flying through the air was caught in the shifting gravity and dragged back into the center, collapsing inward in an undoing of the initial explosion. It was like someone had pressed the rewind button on the whole dramatic eruption of mana, but there was no way all that energy could be put back into place properly.

Gibson’s jaw dropped as the explosion contracted, the lingering aura of light and heat, and all of the airborne shrapnel drawing backwards in a completely jumbled mess. The retraction wasn’t smooth at all. It was a violent pull that further destroyed everything it caught, whether it was demon manifestation, system foundation, or human construction. The violence of the reversal was at least as devastating as the initial blast, but it extended much further.

Even the roaring sound played itself in reverse, converting to a guttural clamor as the oxygen in the air was stripped from their lungs and pulled away. Gibson gripped his sword, fighting the urge to topple forward as he sought to confirm the destruction of the demonic army. The others around him muttered in disbelief and awe, astonished by the destructive power they had gathered in their shard. The pine trees around them bent and twisted in the reversing winds, sending loose branches into the mix, but the trunks avoided breaking as the fireworks continued.

The hidden mana pylons buried beneath the bridge erupted all along the remnants of the northern section as planned, detonating in a chain reaction that annihilated countless more demons, but the southern charge abruptly stopped before drawing all the way to the coast, where the army of humans waited. Something had gone slightly wrong, though the main shard had been significantly more destructive than anticipated.

They had planned to force the surviving demons into crawling across the sea floor to reach them on the southern shore, but enough of the forces of mana retained their position on the ruined bridge that they would still have a small skirmish on their hands before setting off. Gibson witnessed golems stumbling forward with only half their mass still intact, their backs completely evaporated and replaced with dying flames before they tripped into the water. Larger enemies stirred themselves where they had been thrown, flat on the ground, but for every surviving demonic remnant a dozen others dissipated after succumbing to their injuries.

In the aftermath of the final implosion, a huge empty void replaced the deep waters beneath the now absent settlement, resisting gravity before the ocean could properly reshape itself. The air was thick with what Gibson assumed was charged mana, completely overwhelming the sulphur that accompanied the demons with a scent that reminded him of bleach.

The lapping of deceptively calm waves against the shore, the distant roars of demons carrying from as far as the opposite side of the sea, and his own heartbeat ringing in his ears were the dominant sounds after the implosion faded. The remains of the bridge were mere jagged stumps at the furthest point from the settlement, with more pieces breaking off as the water finally began to fill the void in the center.

The demons that were caught in the initial blast were destroyed without question, including the variants that had crushed the reinforced defenses throughout the bridge stronghold. Monsters more powerful than Region Bosses had disappeared, any hint of their hellfire blood evaporating in an instant. Then the more distant enemies were ripped apart and unmade as they were caught in the ensuing implosion.

The few remaining forces on the southern section of the bridge succumbed to their wounds or were picked off by the ranged soldiers as his party members ordered for volleys to be fired while preparing a hasty defense. They already knew they couldn’t underestimate their enemies, the individual power of even the smaller individuals rivaling that of the most powerful human defenders. Humans were already well aware that they had to make up for what they lacked with teamwork, strategy, and commitment to their actions. Destroying millions of demons in one fell swoop felt like a good example of what they were still capable of, even if it came at the expense of one of the last civilization shards on the planet.

Gibson shook his head at the devastation in the center, struggling to comprehend the forces they were playing with. For all the demons’ strength, even they were swept away by mana itself. It was unbelievable that Coop had survived something like that in the past. Though the Yucatan settlement had been less upgraded than Neptune’s Bridge, it still seemed impossible to withstand such energy. Their Champion was definitely abnormal, but that was fine. At this point, they all were.

As Gibson cast his eyes across the miles of sea, his expression morphed into a scowl, growing uneasy after what he saw. The air was temporarily clear as even the corrupting haze was dissipated by the destruction of a well-developed civilization shard. Gibson was able to witness the horrifying scale of the forces of mana that pursued them, the distance not doing enough to shrink their presence.

Before the dust settled and the ripples faded in the water, the shadowy forms of burning demons emerged from the smoke on the far side. Their numbers were simply endless. It seemed like outside of Lighthouse territory, not a single inch of the planet was left uncovered. The forces of mana completely obscured the land with their stone and flame bodies.

Despite the sacrifice of a civilization shard, the advance of the demonic legions was only temporarily stalled. Such incredible destruction was hardly sufficient. If millions of demons died, ten times as many waited to take their places, and now they had another section of the planet to claim.

The vastness of the demons was certainly intimidating, and they were only one portion of the forces of mana that threatened humanity. Without the bridge funneling them, they lined up on the opposite shore, spreading until they filled the empty expanse across the horizon, slowly wading into the sea. They kept building up until the crimson haze finally shrouded their ultimate numbers from view, masking their physical forms but not their flames, breaking the spell that had Gibson temporarily mesmerized.

He pursed his lips and nodded to himself before shouting to get the attention of his party and everyone else. It was time for them to get moving. They needed to get into a more secure formation. The headstart they had anticipated would be less than planned.

Gibson led the way, heading south. They would be relying on the muddy terrain of the Everglades to slow the demons and give the human defenders an advantage in maneuverability. It would have been better if they weren’t surrounded, but the forces of mana refused to play along.

The greatest number of enemies amassed at the edges of Neptune’s Bridge, unable to conquer their defenses for a long time, but other legions had formed wherever they could accumulate the mana, where Outposts had fallen and near the chasms that connected the surface to the Underlayer. Gibson’s party and his allies needed to stay ahead of the main mass that blanketed the land with flames while contending with the large forces that hunted for humans lingering near the mana pylons that had been spread throughout the region and ultimately assaulted Empress City.

Gibson was leading the last human army still operating outside of the final two strongholds of the Lighthouse. All the rest had been evacuated or lost. They charged toward the mud and swamps with a force that could barely compare to their enemies, fully resolved to lay their lives down if it meant frustrating the demons for a few more days. They’d keep fighting on behalf of those who had already been killed for the good of the ones who were still resisting.