The wooden gates of the camp’s barricades opened, and an organised force marched into the frozen wasteland. Their formation was considerably smaller than the army that had already been destroyed.
At the very front of the force walked a man wearing light animal-skin armor, his long black hair falling below his shoulders and moving with the cold wind.
Enzo gazed straight ahead as he walked. He didn’t waste time looking towards the devastation in the distance, but the destruction was impossible to ignore. The massive crater created by the siege weapon stretched across the battlefield, while the main Eidolon army remained visible beyond it. The sight alone was enough to remind every soldier why they had been ordered to leave the camp this early.
Enzo activated his Dormant Ability.
His body immediately began to grow larger. His legs changed first, his lower body gradually shifting as his human legs transformed and another pair of powerful limbs emerged from behind him. His muscles expanded, his posture changed, and his body continued reshaping until the transformation was complete.
He had become a part-man, part-horse creature, his four legs digging into the snow as he continued marching without slowing down. Even his eyes had changed, becoming sharper and more animalistic, while his teeth had enlarged into something far more suited to his new form.
Enzo reached over his shoulder and retrieved the crooked blade strapped across his back, gripping the weapon tightly as he looked towards the battlefield.
"Dormant Ability... Wild Centaur."
The woman walking beside him looked up at his transformation and smirked ambiguously.
"You know you owe me a ride, right?"
Enzo glanced down at her, revealing his enlarged teeth as he gave her an annoyed look.
"Daisy. Shouldn’t you be at the back of the formation? You might hurt your pretty face."
Daisy snickered.
"They’ll have to catch me first."
The moment she finished speaking, her body suddenly rose from the ground. Her feet left the snow completely as she suspended herself several meters above the ground, moving through the air while effortlessly matching Enzo’s pace.
She glanced sideways at him.
"You should know, Naomi is dead."
Enzo’s expression immediately changed, for a brief moment, he stopped paying attention to the battlefield ahead.
Naomi wasn’t simply another member of the camp to them. She had protected both of them when they had nobody else to rely on. They had followed her for a long time, growing stronger under her protection until they were finally capable of standing on their own.
Hearing that she was dead felt almost unreal, Enzo’s grip tightened around his crooked blade.
"Are you sure she’s dead?"
Daisy remained composed despite the seriousness of what she had just said.
"Allen’s Soul Sight confirmed it, but she couldn’t see who killed her exactly." Daisy looked towards the distant battlefield. "She did say Naomi fought two powerful Dormant-rank Awakened with unique statuses. The list of people in the camp who could actually do something like that shouldn’t be very long."
Enzo lowered his head slightly.
He had expected to hear that Naomi was injured or missing. Death was something else entirely. He slowly exhaled before looking forward again.
"Let’s finish this and find her killers."
His eyes hardened.
"I promise them a swift end, something they don’t deserve."
Daisy rested both hands behind her head as she floated alongside him.
"You do realise that Awakened strong enough to kill Naomi won’t be easy to deal with, right? Why don’t we just cut our losses and make peace with our unknown enemies?"
Enzo’s blade suddenly swept towards her.
Daisy’s eyes widened as the crooked weapon sliced through the space where her body had been only a moment earlier. The force of the swing disturbed the snow around them, but she had already moved upward.
She slowly descended again, returning to Enzo’s level while staring at him with disbelief. Her heart was palpating wildly from the sudden attack.
"Naomi protected you when you had no one," Enzo said coldly. "The least you can do is avenge her death."
Daisy glared sharply at him.
"You better watch where you swing that..."
She stopped herself and stared at him for a moment.
"But you have a point."
Her expression became more serious as she looked towards the distant battlefield.
"We shouldn’t let her killers get away with it."
Enzo nodded. Neither of them said anything else until they finally reached the first advance force, or what remained of it. The soldiers who had survived the siege weapon’s attack were still scattered across the battlefield.
More than three hundred men had marched out with the first advance force, but fewer than two hundred were still alive. Even those who survived weren’t all capable of fighting. Some were limping, others had injuries that had been hastily bandaged, and several could barely stand without leaning against another soldier.
Enzo’s own force had been assembled ahead of time as reinforcements. They numbered only around two hundred, but unlike the survivors, most of them had yet to experience the full force of the battle.
The final force remained inside the camp.
They had been assigned a defensive role and were still under orders to remain there until they were needed. With the evacuation underway, nobody knew whether they would eventually be called into the battle or be forced to defend the camp until the very end as Andrea’s plan had initially drawn.
Enzo looked over the survivors before approaching Andrea.
"Andrea, I am Enzo. One of Naomi’s followers."
"I know who you are." Andrea cut him off before he could say anything else. "Where is Jackson?"
"Claire asked him to take over the evacuation. Although I personally feel his talents would be more useful with us than protecting the non-combatants and children... But she says you will approve of her actions as they are a necessity".
Andrea nodded.
She understood Claire’s decision, even if she didn’t necessarily agree with it. Jackson was one of the stronger people still inside the camp, and having him escort the healers and utility-based Awakened through the ice caves meant fewer capable fighters were available for the battle.
But the evacuation was just as important.
"Find Ryan and integrate yourselves with the others. We begin our assault before they can fire that weapon a second time... the Eidolons will avoid a direct confrontation to the best of their ability, let’s take advantage of that".
Andrea then looked towards Daisy.
"Daisy, stay. We need to talk."
Daisy slowly descended from the air, landing beside Andrea as the soldiers behind her continued marching forward to help reorganize the survivors.
Once she was close enough, Daisy’s expression became noticeably more serious.
"I’m sorry to say, but Naomi is dead."
Andrea frowned lightly.
"I figured she was by now."
Daisy froze, for several seconds, she simply stared at Andrea, clearly struggling to process the response.
"Damn, that’s cold." She shook her head. "Isn’t she a childhood friend of yours?"
Andrea didn’t argue. Instead, she looked towards Daisy with a more serious expression.
"Did Allen find Vincent?"
Daisy shook her head.
"She said some random bullshit about her ability not being able to sense his soul, but she has a strange feeling that he was with Naomi when she died."
Andrea’s eyes narrowed slightly.
That was more concerning than Naomi’s death itself.
If Vincent had been with Naomi when she died, then his disappearance suddenly became much more important. There was still no proof that he had anything to do with her death, but the timing was too suspicious to simply ignore.
"Does anyone else know about this?" Andrea asked.
Daisy shook her head again.
"No. Just me and Allen. Allen isn’t the talkative type, so she won’t say anything. Although Enzo seemed pretty revenge-driven when I told him about her death, he doesn’t have an inkling of who could’ve killed her though".
Andrea looked towards Enzo.
The man was already helping organize the newly arrived force, completely unaware of what Daisy and Andrea were discussing. His expression was calm, but Andrea could tell he was still thinking about Naomi.
She didn’t need another internal conflict right now.
"Just because Vincent was there doesn’t mean he killed her."
Daisy thought otherwise, but she didn’t want to argue with Andrea. She simply nodded.
"Yeah, of course. It could have been anyone. Maybe a random Awakened monster, or the other guy that was there."
Andrea raised her head.
"The other guy?"
Daisy realized she had mentioned something important.
"Yeah. Allen couldn’t identify him either. She said Naomi was with two powerful Dormant-rank Awakened with unique statuses, but she couldn’t determine who the second person was."
Andrea’s expression became more serious.
"Was she able to discern the person’s identity?"
Daisy helplessly shook her head.
"Apparently not. I’m starting to feel like she’s using unique statuses as an excuse to be lazy. Just how many unique people could there be in camp?"
Andrea shook her head and turned away.
"You wouldn’t know the half of it."