The Innkeeper

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.

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