Mary loved being a Mage Gunner. She loved being able to shoot through hordes of monsters, her friends at her side and her guns blazing. She loved the feeling of the experience rolling in, making her feel like every pull of the trigger was an accomplishment.

She did not love people dying all around her.

She unloaded a fusillade of shots on two Ursine Skulkers that were harassing some low-level Defenders. The bears, far too sleek and lithe to look natural and with jet-black fur, turned to roar at her. Which was of course what she had intended, but another dozen low-level Porcine Runners came with them.

Mage Gunner was good at single-target damage, but it was hard to collect good area spells for it. She hadn't had time for that yet, leaving her weak against smaller, more numerous enemies. She kept her attacks on the bears, trusting Ruth's grenades, or even just her wild hammer blows, to get the job done.

Mary's mana zeroed out, and she breathed in deep to accelerate her regeneration. One of the quirks of the Mage Gunner class was that you didn't need bullets for your guns. Shots required a small amount of mana, and more for using an actual spell. That meant it was very easy to run out of mana very quickly.

Thankfully, upon taking the class Mary also received the [Gunner's Focus] aura. As an aura, it reserved a large portion of her mana, but in exchange it massively increased her passive mana regeneration. To be more specific, it let her breathe in the mana of the air, almost as good as if she was using the [Meditation] skill at all times. Unlike that skill, she could still fight while regenerating mana.

Unlike Josh, Mary had her stats spread out pretty well, so while the aura dipped into her mana pool pretty heavily, her Capacity made up for it. Her Sensitivity was enough to reduce the cost of her bullets to a manageable level, and her Flexibility let her draw in that mana very quickly.

It was still a delicate balance, though.

“I'm running low!” Mary called over her shoulder. “Mana in the area is dipping!” That could happen when too many people breathed in mana at once. It would regenerate soon enough once they left, but for the moment her regeneration rate was stuttering like an old engine.

She continued blasting away at the monsters. Every pull of the trigger produced a flash of light from one of her guns, a beam or afterimage from the barrel, and a sharp smell of too-sweet smoke. Monsters crunched and squealed in pain as they died.

It wasn't enough, and around her more people were slaughtered.

They had chosen the gate of the main village to make their stand. This was where the horde was concentrated, coming after the most amount of people and, most importantly, after the improved citystone. That was what had drawn them here.

Mary didn't think that Ruth had figured it out yet. She certainly wasn't going to tell her, and they had more important things to worry about right now.

Right now, Ruth was on the front line, bashing into the monsters with her giant hammer next to Mayor Vashti, Samson, and every other melee fighter that they could get their hands on. [Defenders] with giant shields or thick armor—a gift from Samson's Armorsmith class—kept the monsters back as best as they could, while the [Attackers] darted between them, stabbing or poisoning anything they could reach.

They looked like they were trying to beat back the tide. The horde seemed infinite, countless low-level Formics pouring out of the thick trees, interspersed with higher-leveled ant-centaurs and bigger monsters like the Ursines and Porcines. Every once in a while, an animated tree would stumble into the open, and everyone with a fire ability would drop everything to burn it down. One strong tree monster could rip their walls apart.

Mary stood on the top of the wall with the two Archers from earlier, plus dozens more ranged [Attackers] and every [Healer] in the town. Even Judith, the Hunter who had turned into a Trapmaker, was up with her, throwing out new traps as fast as she could make them. It wasn't how her class was supposed to work, but she was tying up major targets or even causing small explosions that put a dent in the horde.

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Mary wished the melee fighters could retreat inside the walls, but the sad irony was that the walls were too weak for that. A wooden palisade was not strong enough to handle an attack like this. By keeping their fighters out front, the horde concentrated their attention in one spot, giving them a chance to fight them back. If they closed the gates, the horde would just rip the walls apart.

She understood that, tactically. She might not be some genius strategist, but you didn't last long as a reclaimer if you didn't understand the basics of fighting a horde. That didn't mean she had to like how many people they were losing.

Even as she watched, she saw a man she didn't know, a Zephyr by the looks of his equipment, dragged screaming under the carpet of ants and squealing boars. The Zephyr class was a dodge-type [Defender], perfect against a single slow target and absolutely terrible against multiple enemies. There was the brief glow of green healing magic, a [Healer] trying to save him, before he was dragged under the monsters.

She couldn't even hear his screams over the sound of the horde. The chittering of the ants, the squeals of the pigs, the cracking of the trees and howls of the wolves... it all turned into a massive ocean of sound, washing over her as a single wave of noise that she felt more than heard.

“Oi!” Mary yelled, hardly even managing to make herself heard. “Need more bombs on eight o'clock!”

Farther up the curve of the wall, a Mage called out, then started casting with both hands. Fire started swirling between his palms. Mary waited until he was almost done, then fired a Vareo Shot at the part of the horde closest to the position she had called out.

She got lucky and hit a big walking tree. The gravity bullet caused the monster to stop, the weight of its own dense wood suddenly turning against it and breaking it into splinters. Mary could already see it beginning to break when the Mage's fireball hit it square in the trunk. The explosion took out most of the ants and pigs in a ten-yard radius, giving the [Defenders] in that area a bit more breathing room.

Mary saw the Zephyr, just briefly, as the ocean of monsters was pushed back for a moment. He wasn't getting up again.

Darius had taken his place on the line.

Almost every [Defender] had one of his shrouds now, including Darius himself of course. It was the only reason that they were lasting as long as they were. But they were still basic shrouds, and they didn't last long. They tried to swap out, to give the shrouds time to recharge, but they didn't always manage it in time.

Ruth came up again and started throwing her simple grenades into the horde. They did a good job of reducing the numbers of lesser monsters, but they barely even injured the bigger ones. She hadn't managed to repeat her earlier feat, getting a monster to swallow a grenade and blowing it up from the inside. Mary thought that if she managed that, they might actually thin the horde enough to break them.

Monsters weren't infinite, not even insect-type monsters. Eventually, enough of them would die that they'd be scared off, at least until they built their numbers back up again. There was no way the attacks would be this bad every time. Yes, the improved citystone was a huge draw, but there had to be something pushing them forward. It was as if every insect colony and wolf pack in a hundred miles had decided to attack at the same time!

She fired off another few Pyro Shots. There had to be an enemy [Tamer] working against them. Maybe more than one. While there was no way that a single [Tamer] could have controlled this many monsters—not unless the Seventh Immortal himself was fighting them—he had to have done something. Stirred up the nests and sent them towards the village. That sort of thing.

Mary took in another breath of mana and grimaced. She wasn't regenerating anywhere near as much mana as she should be. She glanced over at the other magic-types scattered along the wall. Mayor Vashti had ordered them to space themselves out to hopefully reduce the drain on the mana in a single area. Clearly, that wasn't working as well as she had hoped. One of the Mages was sitting below the lip of the wall, eyes closed and trying to meditate, while the others were being more conservative with their spells.

She took in another breath, more to steady herself than anything, and pushed more magic into her guns. They were growing hot, and had that burned-sugar smell indicative of too much magic. She didn't have time to worry about that. She didn't have time to consider how she had fired her guns more tonight than she ever had in her entire life. She didn't have time to worry about what would happen if she somehow managed to break them.

She just raised her guns and resumed shooting.

That was when the rear wall of the village exploded into shrapnel.