In another part of the city, Lena was doing something similar. At level 285, she became a phantom, a blur of motion that the eye couldn't track. She didn't use brute force like Helga did; she used ambushes and sneak attacks, and of course, more summoned creatures, given how much she had been influenced by Reidar.

She led her group through the ruined husks of office buildings, engaging few monsters at a time, at best one or two, but that also meant that their battles were the ones that lasted less, because everyone would basically gang up on the same target.

In front of her was a Mird-Stalker, a feline-like predator with fur that drank the light and claws that could shear through steel.

Those beasts were fast, but Lena was faster. She danced between them, hampering them, blinding them, leaving them crippled but alive.

"Finish it," she said to her group without a shred of pity. Her followers then swarmed the beasts.

They weren't strong, not yet, but they were on the way to the promised level.

They summoned their own creatures too, using the same tactics as survivors in other groups. They distracted monsters and attacked from behind. Often, this wasn't even necessary, but it was also true that even with Lena crippling a monster, the low-level fighters still struggled to bring it down.

—***—

In the center of the district, Jake led his group fairly well despite that being his first experience.

He didn't fight with weapons; he fought with the army Reidar had taught him to build, or the skills he bought for whenever he wanted to close a fight quickly or heal when deemed necessary, and his heals were MASSIVE.

Around him, summoned War Mastiffs clashed with a horde of thunder-maned lions. The lions were monstrous, their paws large enough to crush a man's chest. But Jake's summons were far more than the opponents. Of course, he needed to give the others a chance to land hits and get contribution points, but that was easier said than done.

Jake was naturally nervous since it was the first time he had to take care of someone else, so he often overdid it, which forced him and the rest of the group to search for and eventually kill other groups of monsters.

His group of twenty huddled behind the line of snarling hounds, using ranged magic to chip away at the lions.

He rotated his hounds, pulling back the wounded and pushing forward the fresh, ensuring that his charges always had a target but were never overwhelmed.

—***—

And then there was Matthias. Reidar's father was on level 196. He stood in a plaza that had been turned into a kill zone, surrounded by his trainees. But Matthias wasn't hiding.

He was in front of everyone else; his Mana Sword was in his hands. His crutch was replaced by a floating platform of mana, a skill he bought from Zix the previous day, allowing him to glide across the battlefield without having to exert himself that much.

He faced a herd of monstrous stags, creatures with antlers of jagged bone and eyes burning with madness.

"Stay close! " Matthias said. "Focus your fire on the left flank!"

Around him, his summoned Field Medic Cadre flitted like hummingbirds.

Sixty small sprites wove through the combat, applying heals and weaving defensive barriers around the other survivors.

His group was taking risks and fighting aggressively because they knew Matthias wouldn't let them die. It was working.

Matthias slashed through a stag, his blade absorbing its mana, then turned and unleashed a wave of healing energy that revitalized his tiring soldiers.

He was proving, with every swing and every spell, that he was more than just a healer.

—***—

Aldric, Seraphine, John, and Kara were doing the same in their sectors. Aldric, at level 182, led his troops against winged serpents.

Seraphine at level 201 turned the streets into a sniper's alley against some kind of leaping raptors.

John and Kara, pushing near level 150, were holding their own against waves of some weird bugs, proving they deserved to stand with the elite, although they weren't as strong as them. Of course, Reidar was paying great attention to the low-level groups. The last thing he wanted was for them to get killed, and the chance of this happening was rather high given the low levels.

His own monsters were on the hunt too. He got many levels, that was true, but he didn't feel ready yet. He needed to kill more monsters to gain more levels. The problem was that the level 300 and higher monsters Reidar tried to fight decimated his army. They were on a whole different level compared to the lower-level monsters.

While he had been able to kill monsters several levels higher than his until that point, the strategy didn't work anymore. The tier difference was just too great, and even his best summons were struggling. Though they made it possible for him to kill a strong monster, it was at the cost of having to sacrifice his entire army and spend all his mana.

Tiers started mattering.

Maybe that was the reason Aaron was below level 300; he simply found nothing he was able to kill to grow. The difference between him and Aaron, though, was that he just needed to wait in order to level up.

The city trembled. Hundreds of monsters were dying.

Hundreds of survivors were ascending. Most of them did. They were getting there, and this was just after a week of combat, so, in three other days, they would get to higher levels. They were becoming the army Reidar needed.

The only thing everyone regretted was that they were able to bring so few people each to level up. It was because of their low starting levels, but there was nothing Reidar and the others could do about it.

The others asked Reidar to keep leveling them up, but he refused. First, because he too had to level up too. He also had to increase his skill proficiencies so that he could summon even more creatures.

His new summoning skills' proficiencies were still lower than 50%, so he needed to get them as high as possible. If Silas was really stronger than Aaron, his usual army was bound to do nothing.

The second reason was that the Vorathid Foragers were barely enough to keep the other monsters away.

"Less than a week… Then we are going to attack. I need to be ready…"

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