Edith Buford ignored the stuffy atmosphere, absorbed in her own personal ruminations. She was surrounded by other anxious volunteers from Ghost Reef, quietly having nervous conversations while bracing against waves and the occasional burst of firepower that rocked the sea. They were packed like sardines, but at this point they were all members of one large humanity-wide family, so the proximity was not a problem.

She had turned inward with her thoughts and was reminiscing about the pre-mana days. She had lived a long and fulfilling life, but quite frankly, the final years had been a bit sad. Her body had started failing long before her mind, making it difficult to be independent, so she moved to an assisted living home. When her thoughts also slowed and the days grew fuzzy it was hard to stay positive about her existence.

Back then, the only thing she could do was reflect on the same few happy memories that still willingly came to her from years long past. Unfortunately, there was no one to remember them with, just overworked nurses and caretakers who had already heard the stories dozens of times before. Even the family she had built gradually forgot about her, too busy with their own lives to maintain contact after they moved all across the country. She was proud of them, but it was still a bit depressing, and as time rolled on, even their voices on the phone weren’t enough to remind her of their faces.

Only Jonah, her sweetest grandchild, kept visiting in person, coming to the nursing home every weekend while he lived on his own and went to college, studying and working various part-time jobs at coffee shops or restaurants. He’d help her with that week’s crossword puzzle and make sure the television programs were appropriate in a drastically changing world that was becoming a bit scary for her. He was a good boy who stayed out of trouble, but this time he was caught in a dangerous situation.

That’s why Edith was among the first to volunteer to be in the transport ships. She’d make sure Jonah and all the others made it back to Ghost Reef. They were working so hard to take care of their allies in Empress City, it was only fair that she worked hard to bring them all home.

Never in a million years could she have imagined leaving the nursing home, let alone becoming Ghost Reef’s rather infamous Dreadnought. Even living as long as she had was a surprise given her youthful indiscretions, but she had made it to the critical juncture represented by mana. She couldn’t help but giggle at the twists of fate that let her be renewed. Who could have predicted aliens and magic? The sound of her quiet laughter was transformed by her helmet, making her sound much scarier than the little old lady inside, drawing a few glances from the troopers all around her.

For Edith, mana had been a rebirth, empowering her to reclaim a shred of the vibrant woman she had once been. She was still old, her hair in tight white curls beneath the black metal armor with all its spikes and ridges, but she had never felt so powerful. When she looked in a mirror, she still resembled how she had appeared when she first became a grandmother and hosted all the family events, taking care of every detail when it came to planning and preparation. The difference was that she could wield a heavy black iron mace and equip herself with armor that altogether weighed more than the family station wagon from back in the day.

She was truly a force to be reckoned with, and it all stemmed from the excitement of awakening from the fog of old age. Only a few were more diligent than the elderly that had joined Ghost Reef in the tutorial days. They had the wisdom to embrace the second chance with all their heart, but also the prudence to not overdo it by easing into the longer grinds. The aches and pains were gone, but their memory of such nuisances wasn’t something easily forgotten.

They continued the type of hobbies that they had picked up later in life, like gardening, crochet, fishing, tai chi in the park, and walks around the neighborhood, and for some reason they were rewarded for every little thing. Unlike so many others who had been guided into rushing for levels by their sponsors in the tutorial, she had slowly ramped into her growth, starting mostly from the Siege Event. From there they leapt past the rest of the world, pacing themselves with their side activities and embracing the many benefits of Ghost Reef. They were a bunch of old fogies, but just about every one of them had also become absolute powerhouses, Edith chief among them.

She took a deep breath, smiling inside of her armor, and prepared herself for battle. All around her, the inside of the boat was packed with Ghost Reef’s soldiers. They quietly checked each other's armor, inspected their weapons, or simply stared at the forward wall in anticipation for its opening. The inside of the transport ship was dark, lacking any windows at all.

They had stern expressions on their faces, already weary after the constant fighting back home, but they had volunteered for this operation, recognizing its importance even before considering the friends and family they sought to reunite. It was an event horizon for human survival. If they failed, the loss would devastate not only Empress City, but also the island settlement that was halting its defense to try and bring a few more people back.

Ghost Reef was the last bastion of humanity. They knew no one else could save the people inside Empress City. Edith propped her spiked mace on her shoulder and waited. It wouldn’t be much longer.

The increasingly constant roar of cannons sounded like a combination of thunder and machine gun fire as the battleships escorted the transports. The choppy waves slapped against the hull of the converted Sapphire Armada tub ship, a rhythmic contrast to the thrum of the ship-borne arsenal and all of the chaotic shouts between sailors in the distance.

Her ship was lucky to avoid any direct hits up to that point, with the forces of mana spanning the entire distance between Ghost Reef and the mainland, but the Tempest Fleet was more than ready for naval combat. Every surviving ship was involved in the current operation, one way or another. Whether they were moving along the coasts, securing the expanse of ocean all the way back to their island headquarters, or protecting the transport ships as they rushed toward the shore.

The ship’s air became even heavier as the anticipation grew palpable. As soon as they lurched to an abrupt stop, going from maximum speed to still in an instant, the ramp groaned like a tortured piece of metal annoyed at its release. It slammed down into the churned sand and sea of what had once been a popular tree-lined oceanside park and would now become a battlefield.

Edith was the first to plant a foot outside of the thousands of ships, maintaining her balance through the rigidness of her hulking armor. She could immediately tell that the surface was not true beach sand. It stank of alien corruption, causing her to curl her lip in disgust, like she had run her finger across an empty shelf and found it caked with dust.

While she scanned the landscape other figures stumbled out of their ships, silhouetted against the dim lights able to penetrate the crimson haze. The enormous pirated Sapphire Armada Capital ship was still offshore, filled with hundreds of thousands of soldiers. A few highlights provided streaks of illumination as fire and magic started to shoot across the sky. Projectiles scattered into the distance both to and from the coast as the fighting tentatively began.

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Then, a wave of reptiles of all different sizes rushed down the beach, eclipsing a small ridge that separated the rest of the mainland from the coast. The monsters almost immediately crashed against the freshly beached soldiers, seeking to overwhelm them before they were even unloaded from the ships. Their scales were gleaming with moisture in the crimson light, their snouts splitting in toothy sneers that glinted with needle-like sharpness.

Edith planted her mace into the first horse-sized lizard that dove toward the gate of her transport while the rest of her troop struggled back onto their feet, crushing its skull with the ponderous weight of her weapon as opposed to any specific strength. She yanked it out of the collapsing monster with a gush of blood and mana, already aiming for another.

A spear-like barb, tipped with gold that reflected the light, flashed past her before she could react. One of her comrades, a simple warrior that was young enough to be Jonah’s age, shouted in pain as it pierced his shoulder, the impact lifting him from his feet and sending him sprawling into the shallows between the boats. He scrambled to unsheathe the sword at his hip, but the lizardman followed its throw and slammed a scaled claw down on his wrist while it retrieved the barbed polearm from the flesh it had pierced and prepared an execution strike.

A blade of moonlight flashed, tearing through both arms of the alien invader, sending the creature back with a screech. It stumbled backwards with a hiss as golden blood sprayed from the ruined limbs before it could finish the injured kid. The leader of the Kitawa party was quick to lend a hand as her ship landed next to theirs, bisecting the reptile through its torso with a smooth motion that ended with her oversized sword back in its original place.

Around them, the artificial beach became a mess of violence. Fiery explosions of hellish flame engulfed individual boats, battleships sank and burned while still more transports beached themselves. The soldiers of Ghost Reef that spilled onto the land were armed with swords, spears, and axes empowered by the power they had carved out for themselves, wearing the best armor available in the assimilation. They fought with the desperation of cornered animals even though they were the ones assaulting this desert-like beach, charging through sand and ash.

Edith found the land unrecognizable, as it had been completely transformed by the golden sands of the dragons after being scorched by the demons. There wasn’t a single hint of civilization present. There were no signs or buildings or any type of development. The ground was like a raw field, none of the pavement or any sort of artificial landscaping still existing. It felt like humans were the ones invading a different planet.

While Edith charged ahead, magic flared all over the place. Bolts of light seared through reptilian flesh, shields of shimmering energy deflected clawed attacks and catapulting fireballs that rained into the crowds. Cannons and ballistas flew overhead, colliding with alien projectiles and exploding into dramatic showers of shrapnel that rained to the ground, clanging off her pauldrons, but not slowing her down in the slightest. Manifestations of fire and lightning flew inland, almost mocking the draconic forces of mana with depictions of real dragons made of raw elemental magic that demolished swathes of their enemies.

A giant stone golem attempted to punch the daylights out of Edith, but she grabbed it by the wrist and slammed her mace into its burning head. The resulting explosion sent sparks scattering across the sands and into other similarly quick engagements.

An imp hovered above the enemies, barely avoiding arrows and bolts of water, sending smaller scorching balls into the people at her back. She released the destroyed golem and raised her empty offhand toward the creature and a chain of purple, black, and blue energy reached out and grabbed the imp. It was almost instantly pulled into her grasp where she squeezed its neck before popping its skull with her mace.

Then, the lightning started landing as a thunderstorm formed. Ghost Reef’s Aeromancer would be leading the forces responsible for protecting the beach. She was safely situated on the largest of the Tempest Fleet’s warships, acting like the crown jewel of the invading army. The humans had no fear of the massive crashes of light and thunder, trusting the incredible sorceress with their lives. The dramatic explosion of power allowed them to take the advantage on the immediate shore, letting more people escape from the transport ships and inch up the beach.

Edith pushed even further forward, ahead of all the rest, lightning smashing at her sides and sending debris in all directions. She was silent, letting her armor do the talking.

The Dreadnought of Ghost Reef was the first to physically break through the lizard and rock soldiers and find the branded demons in the back, using the high ground of the ridge to extend their range. Her hulking form made her an obvious target, but the first fireball to explode on her chest only lit her in hellfire flames before the darkness in her equipment consumed it all. She stomped forward without slowing, passing through the cloud of black smoke so that it twirled behind her, masking all the detail of her armor, but highlighting the glow of her eyes within the helmet for all the forces of mana to see.

She backhanded the caster demon that had targeted her and sent its head flying as she started working her way across the taller dunes, slowly but inevitably crushing the ranged reinforcements of the forces of mana with her mace. They were either distracted or destroyed, depending on their own preference.

Though she made incredible progress, it seemed like every demon or dragon she killed, there were several more ready to take their places. The number of enemies was incredible, to the point that she thought of them like a plague of locus. She made a mess of them, and it wasn’t long before she was joined by hundreds of thousands of other humans, all intent on breaking through a few miles of alien held territory and rescuing the holdouts in Empress City.

This was the largest rescue operation held throughout the entire Eradication Protocol, but it was a mirror of hundreds of smaller missions that had been occurring everyday since the start of the second apocalypse. Desperate evacuations of Outposts and smaller strongholds were a constant responsibility for the Lighthouse and they occurred all over the world. Most of the Ghost Reef powerhouses already knew what to expect when forcing their way into enemy territory, having been dropped into similar situations at least once before on every continent of the planet. Even with all that effort, they hadn’t been capable of bailing out every group that found themselves in a bad situation. This time, they fought knowing that this was the last chance to successfully rescue anyone.

They couldn’t take a single step without fighting another enemy, but this was an all out assault. More waves of transport ships were still landing, further securing their position as Edith rushed deeper into the former city. Shimmering lasers flew past her, providing pinpoint ranged support from Ghost Reef’s commando mother group as she waded through golden blood and hellfire. The metallic bodies of the Cleary Brothers caught up with her, blasting through alien armor with precise teamwork. Assassins stepped out of her shadow, eliminating casters before they had a chance to target the vanguard that formed between the Dreadnought and the Warbusters. Swordsmen flashed forward, forming channels in the monsters before they waited for the steady progress of the most armored classes.

Reclaiming any land was an unbelievable challenge. In the end it took three full days to reach the edge of Lighthouse territory from the coast. Though the defenders of Empress City were relieved to see humans crashing through the flanks of the forces of mana, they had no time to rest. Fighting their way back to the transport ships couldn’t ever be as simple as a stroll to the coast. They still had to fight their way back, but instead of claiming new ground they were barely holding onto a long stretch of territory.

Edith found Jonah teaming up with a fat raccoon that manipulated his spells, multiplying them so that they echoed whenever he attacked while hiding in his backpack. She told him he was always good at making friends and though he seemed embarrassed he was clearly happy to be rescued. They had no problem keeping up as they retreated, and together they kept fighting all the way back, making sure the forces of mana failed to cut them off from the ships.

When they finally made it back to the transport ships, she made sure she was the last one off the beach. The still massive Tempest Fleet sailed back to Ghost Reef with hundreds of thousands of alligators swimming at the side of their ships. As they listened to the continuous cannon fire and magical volleys inside the interior of the transport ships, the tension in the air was finally gone. Though they didn’t celebrate, the mission had been a monumental success that declared for everyone that humanity wasn’t done just yet.