PenguinKills
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Chapter 77 - Defense
🕑 Added 2024-07-12 20:13:24 +0000 UTC~~AN~~
Watch out for an extra chapter tomorrow. I should post it at the regular time but it might be delayed.
(I might be a tad excited to finish my first book)
~~
Craig (Mindbreaker)
Craig had been watching the camp for a couple of days now and he finally got a decent chance to take it. It was one of the strongest camps he had come across with thick stone walls and catapults fastened to the walls. There was only one that he saw that was stronger.
The camp itself looked like a medieval castle.
All of the other camps were barely holding on when he conquered them and this was a stark difference. Well, except for that stubborn lightning mage but Craig didn't like to think about him.
That fight made him lose a good portion of his army and frustrated him to no end. Lightning was a weakness that Craig hadn't anticipated. After his minions got electrocuted, his mental compulsions were wiped out, turning his army into mindless husks.
His orders wouldn't work and he had to recapture them to reinstate his control. The jolt to their system flushed out the claws he dug into them.
He was glad that he pushed the mage out of his camp but disappointed he hadn't killed him. Craig had been there personally to finish him off but he fled faster than Craig thought he would.
He left a few behind to stall and Craig was too late to stop him. The stone walls they held took too long to get through and the mage ran into the territory of the accursed trapper before Craig could get to him. Craig wasn't going to follow into that death trap.
He had made a few forays into her territory before and they never ended well. His believers weren't mindful enough to look out for traps. There could even be obvious tripwires and his army would walk right into them.
Craig had to rework how he gave orders to get over that issue. If he told a minion to go 'that way' it would override their impulse to watch out for traps. This turned his orders into convoluted messes like 'Watch out for traps while going that way' and every failure made him up the complexity. It was immensely frustrating.
It didn't always work but it ended better than the previous way.
It was the main reason he was saving that camp for last. Craig had taken most of the eastern border and worked his way north from there. After reaching the northeast corner, he turned west to sweep along the northern border.
Traveling, personally and with his army, took up most of his time. The tutorial area wasn't small and it took days to reach all of the camps. His skills were high enough that he could convert a camp in 2 days but he had to spend the time to get there. He could be in and out before a wave came if he timed it right.
It made his army have fewer casualties, but he was lower level for it. He was a few levels shy of the next evolution and he couldn't wait to see what he would evolve into.
Level 50 seemed like a big milestone and he was excited.
He turned his attention back to the camp he was watching. It had some strong people and he could already see how useful they would be under his control. He hadn't seen them fight a wave but they looked like veterans.
Every one of them was in the F-rank and most were up there in levels as well. They were on average stronger than those in his army. They had less than a tenth of the number though.
After the lightning mage, Craig's army had dwindled, but it was enough for this camp at least. There were only 20 or so people in it.
Usually, Craig would wait until right after a wave to attack when the camp was at their weakest but something happened to make him move the attack up. As he was watching, the two strongest people in camp left. It left him in shock at first that such an opportunity presented itself but he quickly worked to speed up his planned attack. If he could conquer this place early he could move on to more camps sooner.
He had a minion follow the two as they left for a while and saw that they were preoccupied. They wouldn't be able to get back in time before he took the camp. Once they arrived, Craig could use the camp's defenses against them.
Plus, what could two people do? He had an army.
With his plan made, he signaled for it to begin.
Abigail
Abigail checked in on the project Scott and Brayden were working on. The two of them had been working almost nonstop building defenses. As the waves grew in strength, simple spike traps didn't work anymore.
Both men pushed their professions to make things that could harm the beasts coming to kill us. Scott strengthened and sharpened wood to an unnatural degree and Brayden put it all together into a contraption to kill.
All it needed was for Allison to place it to receive the boosts from her class and skill to increase lethality.
They had learned that splitting the process up worked best. Scott made all of the wooden parts, Vinny made all of the metal, and Brayden put it together. All to have Allison place it.
Every person added to the project with their skills and boosted it from either their class or profession to make something greater than the sum of its parts.
The traps could be placed as soon as they were built, but Connor's part was done the morning before the wave. His poison lost effectiveness if it sat out for too long so he had to wait to apply it to the traps.
He spent most of his time brewing up new and improved poisons to use. Now that he had finished his body refining poison, he was free to make up new nasties to coat the traps with.
Mitchell's procedure had worked perfectly with only a few hitches. Abigail and the other healers were enough to make up for it and Mitchell would soon wake up with a Body of Wood.
Conner's direct input wasn't required for his poison to work, but he was the only one immune to his creations. If anyone else touched it, the poison would infect them.
They had antidotes, obviously, but not an infinite supply.
Conner's new Law left him immune and marked him as the seventh person in camp to have one. Abigail herself didn't even have one yet. She spent too much of her time keeping the camp running.
She knew from the lectures she needed to get one before the evolution to E-ran and now that there was a time limit, she would add some time to her schedule for it.
Her profession was nearing the cap and she didn't want to waste any experience sitting at level 50.
Running the town gave a surprising amount of experience. The constant need to defend it added to successfully defending it made her level rise the fastest out of everyone's.
Even faster than Chris.
Thinking about her brother made her frustrated to no end. The two idiots ran off to go somewhere without so much as a goodbye. Chris needed to learn that the two strongest people in camp couldn't just up and leave.
What if they were needed and they couldn't reach them? Chris didn't even bring a way for them to contact him. He was lucky Abigail prepared so well.
Being a Town Mayor had its perks. She could message the owner of the pylon with one of her skills so she could contact the idiot even though he wasn't here.
Abigail wished he would think through what he did more so she wouldn't have to do it for the both of them.
"Honey, you need to take a break," Jonathan said from behind her.
He moved to massage her shoulders after coming up behind her. She leaned into his touch and sighed deeply.
"I know Jon, but I can't. Everything needs to be perfect for the wave tomorrow." Abigail's constant worries were always on her mind.
Jonathan had been trying to get her to take time to destress and cope with what she was feeling but she couldn't find the time. She barely fit in the therapy sessions she did have.
Not everyone in the camp went, but it was a resource Abigail felt they all needed. It was points well spent in her mind, even if she didn't go as much as she wanted.
The losses and grief all of them were no doubt feeling needed a constructive outlet, unlike how Chris dealt with it.
Any time he got stressed, overwhelmed, or thought about the people not here anymore, he picked up his hammer and left. He would come back a few hours later covered in blood.
It wasn't healthy.
Every time Abigail brought it up he waved her off. Chris spent more time trying to help Austin through his Dad's death than dealing with his own feelings. She still remembered one particular heated argument with him about it.
It was after the Blaze Lion wave where they lost Dawson and Dennis. She had found Chris after the battle still in his worn armor stained with blood sitting in front of the gate he had defended. It seemed he was covered in blood more often than not these days.
"Chris, why don't you go to the session tomorrow? Everyone could use the chance to grieve and do what little they can to cope." She pleaded.
Even with her busy schedule, she still fit in some time for it, but Chris refused. He always said he had better things to do.
"Look out there," Chris said, pointing to the bodies strewn about, "What do you see?"
Abigail wasn't much in the mood for riddles but she played along. Chris wouldn't be doing this for no reason.
"Dead monsters," She answered.
"Yes," He nodded, "How far do they reach?"
She hadn't expected that follow up but surveyed the area before answering, "Just inside the gate."
Most of the bodies were stacked right outside the gate but some had managed to get through and died on the inside. Not a lot, but enough to be noticeable. The amount paled in comparison to the ones outside the gate thought.
"Every wave gets harder to defend. Just look at the number that got by me." He pointed at the small fraction of the bodies inside the gate, "I do not have time to focus on anything else. My attention needs to be here."
He thumped the spot covered in the most blood. His spot in the gateway where he did battle.
Abigail wasn't sure how to respond, but she tried anyway.
"Chris, what you're doing isn't healthy." She said quietly. What her brother was doing worried her. He wasn't the same as he used to be.
"You think I don't know that! That I can't see what's happening! I'm not so blind I don't notice how what happened affects people. Two more because of what? A stray shot!" The way he said it with such heat in his voice, such anger, slightly scared her.
"I do not have time to focus on what we lost. I can't afford to pull my attention away from what needs to be done. My job is to stand in this gateway and stop as many monsters as I can." He slammed his hammer down, "Any stray worry, errant thought, about the people behind me hinders that. My job is here and that's the only thing I can worry about right now."
He seemed to deflate after his outburst before finishing quietly.
"If I open that bottle, pandoras box in a way, there is no closing it. There will be time to do that later. I will do what I must to be the one left standing after this is over."
As he finished talking, he had the same look on his face as he did after dealing with the thieves. While it pained her to admit, she didn't push anymore. She would hold him to that later though.
The memory played again in her mind before she pushed it away. It was painful to see her family hurt and Chris wasn't the only one she had to deal with.
"Where are the kids?" One of them was usually watching them and with Jon here, they were unaccounted for.
"Your Grandmother is with them," He answered.
Ugh. That was another thing she didn't know how to deal with. Grandma wasn't the same anymore and Abigail doubted she ever would be. After Granddad died, she spent most of her time watching the kids.
It was like she was spending as much time with them as possible when she could. It was sad to think about.
"That's good. Spend-" Her response was cut off by the alarm bell.
Hearing the bell, Abigail went into high gear trying to find out what was happening.
Rushing to where the lookout was she found Carrie ringing the bell with frantic enthusiasm.
"Carrie, what's wrong!" Abigail shouted.
"We're under attack!" Her shout got everyone in motion.
"From the East!"
With a direction, her family all raced up the walls and to where we usually stood for the waves.
Connor and Allison took up the catapults and the rest of them took out their weapons.
Abigail shrugged on her armor as quickly as possible while running toward the eastern wall. She debated sending the message to Chris now but decided against it. She needed to see what they were facing before she called him back.
Her armor was easy enough to get on with all of the practice and she saw everyone else gear up with the same practiced ease. Armor and swords replaced cloth and tools in record time.
Carrie started shooting off arrows from the tower and Abigail saw them spilt into more as they flew. One turned into two before turning into four. The arrows kept splitting as the flew until 16 flew toward whatever threat they were facing. Hal rushed up the tower, bow on his back, to join her.
Rachel reached the wall first and Abigail felt the heat start to rise from her direction.
Her husband rushed to the gate where he usually stood and Earth moved up his form to cover him. He had a similar armor skill as Chris, except instead of ice, it was earth. He broke off from where she was heading and rushed toward the gate with the rest of the melee warriors.
Reaching the top of the wall let her see what was happening.
A mass of different monsters were attacking and skills rained down from the wall on top of them. Abigail was confused, the wave wasn't supposed to start until tomorrow? And they were only under attack from one direction. It was odd.
Everyone was slightly confused, but no one questioned it now. They had enough sense of mind to fight now and ask questions later.
The monsters ran at them from the forest a few miles to the east, farther back than where waves usually spawned.
They were also a mixture of beasts they had faced before already along with a few new ones they hadn't seen. The forest had a lot of animals and Abigail guessed the new beasts were from there.
Still, this was something they had done with ruthless efficiency over 20 times by now. A surprise wave wasn't going to catch them lacking.
Hal had the best [Identify] skill in camp and once he surveyed the battlefield he gave his report.
"Wide range of levels averaging at the low 30's. No boss in sight!" He shouted.
That was new. This wave was weaker than Abigail expected. The wave tomorrow was supposed to bring level 38s. Not level 30s
The number of beasts was another difference. Usually during the wave, they were more unified and charged as a group, but these didn't.
They all charged at different speeds and acted like a conglomerate of individuals rather than a cohesive wave.
The strength of the wave put Abigail off, or rather, the lack thereof.
Something about it didn't sit right with her. This was a break in the pattern that hadn't happened and it was out of character for the tutorial to change so suddenly.
Her family was busy fighting while she tried to work through what was happening. There weren't any injuries for her to heal yet which left her free to direct their defense.
Arrows flited into flesh along with magic raining down destruction. Their supply of throwables wasn't touched by the few who needed them.
There weren't enough enemies to justify using them.
Once the beasts reached the wall, the warriors got to work. With all of them on the same side, they cut through the monsters with ease. Even without Chris and Austin, they were stronger than the rabble thrown at them.
Just when she thought this would get cleared up easily, the bodies of the fallen monsters started to swell.
The corpses grew before exploding out with astounding force.
The explosion blew all of the warriors back and some had noticeable injuries.
The force even knocked some of the people on the wall back and Abigail saw Sam and Ashely going around with healing.
No one was badly hurt but the gate was blown in from the force. It was where most of the bodies were concentrated and worked to increase the blast in that area. The gate leaned on the ground, torn from its hinges.
Her breath hitched initially since that was where her husband was, but his earth-clad form wasn't damaged from the blow.
Before Abigail had a chance to wonder what was going on, she saw more movement coming at them from the east.
"It's people!" Hal and Carrie both shouted.
People? Was it more Raiders?
Now that so much was unknown and out of her control, she fired off her message to Chris.
'Under attack, people and beasts combined. Unknown threat level.'
Hopefully, he would get here in time to deal with everything.
They were strong and could hold out for a while, but this group was proving clever. They tricked them with the beasts to blow open the gate. Did they force the monsters to swallow explosives? Who would think of that.
Were the beasts from before tamed? They certainly didn't look like it. They had the same ferocity and mannerisms as the beasts of the wave.
Except there were explosives hidden in their bodies.
She trusted in their defenses. Abigail knew how much work went into them and getting into the wall was only the beginning.
The people attacking would soon find out the folly of thinking just because the gate was open, they were weak.
Abigail almost pitied them. Chris's mercy was soon running out and she didn't think that these people would be let off with only a missing hand.
Comments
Alexander C Hyde
The amount paled in comparison to the ones outside the gate (though)thought.
Alexander C Hyde
She knew from the lectures she needed to get one before the evolution to (E-rank)E-ran and now that there was a time limit, she would add some time to her schedule for it.
Akkido
This is not good.
