"Jo! You are too far ahead! Stay in range of overwatch!"
Bella's authoritative voice echoed in the air. After combining our groups, we were now headed again for the platform. The problem was, in line Bella's prediction, the amount of undead heading there increased exponentially. We were currently fighting our way ahead, slowly but surely.
I gripped the 1911 with both hands and shot round after round into the Normies approaching Josephine. With {Listen}, {Perceive} and {Aim} my accuracy went several notches up.
Originally, I used to close the distance because I didn't want to miss. But right now? I could win competitive shooting in the Olympics, no problem. It felt unreal.
"Three Chuckies, seven Normies and one Bigfoot coming from three o'clock!" Jasmine announced.
"I hear five Normies coming from nine o'clock," I added.
We adapted our tactics to large swarms of zombies. Instead of charging forward, Jo now only pulled zombies in and then drew them back to us. Jas and I would take them down, while Bella would kill the ones that got too close or approached us from behind.
"Leave the nine o'clock group to me. Focus fire on the three o'clock group and help me afterwards, honey," Bella instructed.
Because she had more leeway, Bella now served as our tactician and directed who killed what. Energized from resting, the two new recruits fought on another level. Their titles as Descendants were not for show.
Jasmine's firing rate and accuracy were frightening. I once read that an English longbowman could shoot 12 arrows in a minute. Our archer was even faster at 18 per 60 seconds or three seconds per arrow!
With each shot landing right in the center of the zombie foreheads, she could effectively clear a group by herself with almost unbelievable accuracy.
Another fortunate miscalculation had happened when I taught Jasmine {Reload}. It allowed her to fire without minding her remaining arrows. She could even dispatch zombies faster than I could with my gun. Did this woman even aim?
There were eleven targets in the 3 o'clock group and with Jasmine and I sniping them nonstop, it ended in under a minute. Funny. If it was just me, I would be struggling with a 11-man zombie group. With Bella, we still needed to take care not to get overwhelmed. Now? This was a cake walk.
"Two dozen Normies! Save me, John!" Jo shouted jokingly as she ran towards us, a large group of undead trailing behind her. If these bastards couldn't even catch my overweight ass, no way they could catch Josephine.
When our blonde rapier-user got within 50 yards, she turned around and took position. With Jo as the vanguard, hardly any enemy got too close. She combined orthodox fencing with savage moves specialized for murder. I didn't think competitive fencing sever tendons in the hands and feet.
Agility wise, her speed surpassed even Bella by several times. Unlike my partner, who fought like a brawler, Josephine fought with the grace and poise unique to European fencing. By engaging in our range, I shot all the zombies that were two feet away from Jo's left while Jasmine did her right side.
Like a child, Jo started laughing somewhere down the line and began kicking the zombies towards our respective kill zones. She would clap and cheer as the zombies got terminated one after another. Perhaps relieved from the stress on her shoulders, the fair-skinned Italian flashed dazzling smiles full of happiness and contentment.
Beautiful, I couldn't help but think.
"Honey, a little help? If you aren't too busy cheating on me."
Whoops. Finally, Bella served as the formation's rearguard. Because she only served as our last line of defense she could conserve her stamina. If a large enough group arrived from another direction, Jasmine and I would pivot to that side while Jo and Bella would reposition.
{Listen} allowed Jo to always focus her hearing on us. This meant she would always move in sync despite the distance.
This formation allowed us to avoid pulling more than we could handle. Like clockwork, we took down wave after wave of wandering zombies without issue.
Testament to their upbringing as Descendants, both Jo and Jas helped Bella as they formed the tactics earlier. I tried to help, but most of what I knew only came from games and was superficial as best. So, I just let them be and focused on killing as much as I could.
With ruthless efficiency, we not only traveled in a straight line towards the platform but annihilated the zombies caught up in our kill radius. Due to working near each other, we not only received souls from our kills but also from the ones that were killed around us.
Even Isabella, who took down the least, still earned a substantial amount of souls while serving as our tactician.
"Formation, stop. Jo, Return. We move again after a rest of ten minutes," commanded Isabella.
As our group approached from one of the less crowded sides of the platform, visibility kept getting better as more and more corpses got set on fire. The sounds of burning also masked other sounds, so the undead became easier to handle.
As the zombies came in batches, we made sure to move when there were the least undead around. We intended to join the army before the next wave arrived. To ensure the safety of the girls, the three of them all chose to have {Rewind} at the ready.
"Damn, you are all so amazing. I feel like I am dead weight here," I complained.
Bella, the tactician and all-rounder, Jas, our rapid fire sniper and Jo, an untouchable vanguard.
"What are you talking about? {Identify} is an unimaginable comfort. We don't have to worry about buried Chuckies while we move. Don't get disheartened, honey!"
"I agree. If not for {Reload} and {Rewind}, I would not be able to fight like this," added Jasmine.
"Totally! You are the core of this group John! Keep your head up, your majesty!"
After the girls had spoken, I saw a green reticule appear a few steps away from Jo. In the same breath I raised the 1911 and fired. The ground ruptured and out came a Chuckie. However, I shot so fast that a bullet slammed into its temple before it could finish standing up.
Jo smiled as she waved towards me. "Thank you, darling!"
Darling? What the hell? Anyway, by combining the {fates} in my possession, I created a new ability called {Identify}. It turned out that the reasons demons were feared was not because of their appearance or strength but because of their ability to create {kismet}.
{Kismet} was the new ability made when two {fates} were joined to fulfill a wish. As normally reapers could only have one {fate} from their kindred, they could by extension have only one {kismet}.
When I was bored, I looked at the ground and wished for the ability to see buried Chuckies. As if to answer my will, {Identify} was born. It used {Perceive} and {Listen} to find targets and once found, it would use {Code} to mark it with a target symbol visible to my eyes.
Each {fate} could be evolved nine times, according to Jasmine. Thus a {fate} would grant ten abilities at max level, at most. Normal reapers would have only two sets, giving them a pool of twenty skills to form a single {kismet}.
As I had {Rewind} and three sets of {fate}, I had twice that amount I could theoretically learn from. I didn't even know if my limit was four. Jas and Jo advised to keep this a secret. It made sense, as even as Formless, this passive ability was too valuable. Jasmine believed it was a passive effect of {Rewind}.
Whatever the truth, it only meant I could still get stronger. Similarly to how reapers took great care in choosing kindred for their {fate}, I needed to take care with my choices in the future. Luckily right now, none of mine clashed with one another, so we were good.
Naturally, after talking to Jo and Jasmine, I finally understood Isabella's condition. She basically told me to marry her!
"What? You already agreed! We even chose our surname! What about Alfonso? Think about him!"
"Who the hell is Alfonso?"
"Our future son? Te-hee?" Bella then stuck her tongue out and struck her head with her fist.
"I refuse! I want a divorce!"
"Divorce? You haven't even married me, you ass!"
This bitch! Jo and Jasmine laughed beside us like innocent schoolgirls. While I found it annoying, Bella and I being older, we intentionally played around to calm the nerves of our little group. While we did clear out a huge number of zombies, they were leftovers.
As the bulk of the undead rushed towards the large army of reapers around the platform, we were basically fighting the ones too stupid to join the main battle.
Without the reaper army, the undead would be roving about by the thousands, preventing us from moving. But now we would be joining them. While Jo and Jas lied about being mugged, the truth was that they were kicked out for being Formless.
The question was, would the army on the platform accept us or send us away? Would it be wise to kill them if they did?
Red was there somewhere. We still had about two hours before the night would end. I wanted him dead before then.
"Guys, the next wave of zombies are coming from 6 o'clock. They are too numerous to count. How do we proceed?" Jasmine asked, warning us all.
Right, no matter how we proceeded, this would be our hardest battle yet.