“Sir, certainly we can’t sit quietly here, watching, while all those soldiers are fighting and dying every day!?” protested Alissa after the third consecutive day where the [Heroes]’ party was told by the fort’s commanders to wait and watch while a gigantic undead abomination wreaked havoc on the defense lines. The inaction gnawed on all of them, not just her. She was just the first to have gathered the courage to voice it out.
The fighting over those days had cost the defenders of the pass dearly. Three of their fourth-tier combatants were recovering from various degrees of injury, while an unfortunate one was directly killed in action just the day before. The fourth tier warrior had stumbled upon a dead man’s corpse and failed to avoid a blow from the abomination he was fighting.
Since the abomination happened to be particularly big, with its arms larger than the warrior’s body, the brutal blow he took was instantly fatal, the man broken far beyond the capabilities of any healer in existence. Everybody had seen his broken corpse, which put quite a damper on the once-high morale of the soldiers of the fort.
Alissa and the rest of her party understood the reasoning why the higher-ups wanted to keep them out of the fight for the time being. They had sent body doubles and lookalikes of the party to other fortifications to make it difficult for the demons to tell where the [Heroes] were, if any of the parties they saw were even real to begin with.
The subterfuge also forced the demons to spread their focus rather than allowing them to concentrate on one spot, which helped keep the [Heroes] safer.
Even so, the sight of so many people dying while they were told to do nothing was a frustrating helplessness that grated on their nerves.
“We just received word an hour ago that the Warlord had been spotted near Fort Austen,” said Sir August Marsten, another old knight from Sir Inolet’s generation and the overall commander of Fort Ixlay. The Warlord he mentioned was the nickname the humans had given to the warrior-type demon [Champion], while Fort Austen was one of the places where a party of body doubles had been sent. “At the same time, the Tactician was rumored to have been present at Fort Ysram.”
“Since we are pretty much certain that the Corpse-Stitcher is present and fighting against us, that’s all three of the known [Champions] accounted for. The diversion had worked, and they had spread their forces wide,” continued the old knight, using the nicknames for the other demon [Champions]. “I’m still somewhat worried about the fourth unknown one, but I also understand your frustrations. You all may participate in fighting the Corpse-Stitcher’s creations tomorrow.”
The [Heroes]’ party broke into a mild commotion at the commander’s approval, clearly eager to take the fight to the enemy, though Sir Marsten’s next words cut through their murmurs like a thunderbolt in clear skies.
“That is with a caveat. I request that you all hold back while fighting tomorrow. Do not use your full power to kill the abomination right away,” said the old knight to questions and protests from the party. “There is a reason behind this, of course. The body doubles we arranged for your party aren’t anywhere near as powerful as you all are, but they’re still above average in power for their level at the very least.”
“I want you all to fight those abominations while pretending to be a group of body doubles. It is plausible enough for one such group to take on one of those monsters without casualties when you have a fourth tier assisting you, so we will do that for the next two or three days,” continued the old man. “I want you to look for similarities between the abominations, any weaknesses they might share. They all looked different so far, but since they’re made by the same person the likelihood of a shared feature like that is high. I want you all to be able to take one of those monsters down instantly on command.”
The silence that dominated the room was palpable as even the duller members of the party caught on to the implications of the words said by the old knight. There was clearly some plot hidden behind his command, and some of them already had a good guess on it. That Sir Inolet nodded thoughtfully also helped give the [Heroes] more confidence on the plan.
“Once you are capable of doing that, we intend to make an attempt to capture the Corpse-Stitcher. This will not be an easy task, and will be risky as it would mean either luring the demons out from the valley or fighting through the valley to reach their camp, but the rewards are equally great,” explained Sir Marsten to the party. “Of course, as the [Heroes], the decision on whether you would like to participate in this or not would be left to your discretion. What say you?”
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A chorus of “Aye”s answered the old knight, with Alissa, Ethan, and Joshua yelling along with the rest of their party. The chance to do something was all they asked for, and the old knight had just given them exactly that. As such, they intended to make full use of the chance he offered to them. All of them found themselves brimming with excitement even when it was time to sleep later that night.
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The following day, all twelve members of the [Heroes]’ party were standing amongst the soldiers deployed to defend the valley’s mouth. They did not show themselves prominently and instead kept a low profile around the middle of the pack, as they knew that their role would begin when the undead abomination arrived, and not sooner.
When the day’s battle began, it started with a horde of weak undead leading the way like usual. After several days, though, the human defenders had expected that and brought several classes who specialized at dealing with such creatures with them. Most of them were priests from the temple, albeit ones who were not specialized in healing like Cerilla was.
Instead, those priests and priestesses specialized in dealing with impure creatures like the undead. Once the horde of undead closed to the frontlines, they went into action one after another. They held holy symbols of the human gods before them, which emitted light that directly vaporized large swathes of the weaker undead within minutes.
Naturally, the demons had also prepared for their intervention, and had hidden some of their troops amongst the undead horde whose mission was to take out those priests and priestesses, but the humans had similarly expected such a move. Each of the priests and priestesses who were present were guarded by a squad of temple guards who specialized in defense, which repelled most of the headhunters, allowing the soldiers nearby to either drive them away or kill them on the spot.
Of course, they didn’t succeed in protecting their charge on every occasion. Even from where they stood, Alissa and the rest saw how two priestesses and a priest were cut down by the demons. Their guards charged at the demons responsible like madmen, some even chasing far into the incoming demon troops and losing their lives as well, but such a sight was an almost everyday thing on the battlefield.
Soon enough, the sight of an undead abomination became visible in the distance. That day’s abomination was particularly horrific, with four rather short legs that looked permanently bent from the weight of the massive body it supported. Its upper body was easily three meters tall, and almost as wide, with eight tentacle-like limbs sprouting out from its sides.
The undead abomination had a face that looked like an obese caricature of a bald man, albeit with six eyes arranged in a ring around its head. Rolls of excess flesh covered its torso as it charged straight at the defenders’ formation, completely uncaring about the spears, javelins, and arrows that pierced its flesh. To be fair, given how much flesh it possessed, those weapons likely did little more than annoy it.
Its tentacles sent soldiers flying with every blow, as the abomination used its mass of corpulent flesh to forcefully push through the human formation. Alissa and the rest of her party were already rushing to the front, along with the pair of fourth tiers assigned to them that day. They hadn’t used any of their skills, other than the buffs, as the active skills tend to be much more noticeable.
On the other hand, while they were to hold back and make it look as if they were just there to pad the numbers, their buffs would also help the fourth tiers fight better, and reduce the risk for the soldiers around them, so there was little reason not to use them. They still saved their best skills in case of a change in the situation, though.
The two fourth tier warriors – a married couple who were both veteran soldiers – struck at the abomination first with their glaives. Their strikes carved off chunks of flesh that must have weighed many pounds with each stroke, yet the abomination seemed to barely notice the damage. Instead, its blows forcefully drove them back every time they actually managed to land.
While the abomination was not particularly fast, it still had eight long and flexible tentacles to attack with, which allowed it to force the couple into situations where they had no choice but to block an incoming blow. When Alissa and the rest of her party entered the battle, the situation immediately eased for them, as Ethan, Bronwen, and Glenn helped divert some of the blows towards themselves, allowing the couple more freedom to attack with.
Alissa and the others who were on offensive duty struck as well, albeit lightly so as not to give away the subterfuge. Even then, their blows still gouged and carved through chunks of flesh from the abomination’s body. The creature didn’t seem particularly resistant to damage at all. Instead, it just had a massive amount of flesh that they had to go through in order to get to anything important.
With the party helping the fourth tier couple, the situation at the frontline quickly stabilized. Alissa and her compatriots focused on the creature’s legs, as they noticed how the creature was very top-heavy to begin with. After they disabled two of its legs, the abomination nearly toppled over, its remaining legs unable to support its mass, rendering it immobile.
From there, it was mostly a matter of time as the fourth tier couple chopped its tentacles off one at a time, taking care not to fall prey to one of the creature’s wild attacks at those final moments. Once the creature was reduced to an immobile pile of flesh that couldn’t even hit back, rather than spend more time trying to find its vital spots, the group decided on a more pragmatic way of finishing it off.
They simply ordered some soldiers to bring a few jugs of oil over, splashed it all over the immobile mountain of meat, and set it on fire.
The abomination screamed as it burned, and even after the day’s fighting came to an end a couple hours later, it was still screaming and burning in the middle of the battlefield. Those who were cleaning up the battlefield took a wide berth from the burning pile at first, at least before they realized that they had a ready-made pyre right there and started tossing the dead demons over to burn along with it instead.
It wasn’t until late in the night that the abomination’s screams died out. Whether that was because the creature had finally given up the ghost or simply because its vocal cords had been burnt off by then, nobody knew. All that was left of the thing was a pile of ashes and charcoal by the time the party looked at the battlefield the next morning.