Chapter 21 – Sound The Alarm

“Trainer Quincy, yours squad is with me. I have no time to spare for you, so you get to follow me around.”

With that the centurion hastens out of the building, calling to his subordinates to line up. Within minutes the whole century is ready for battle.

In the meantime the centurion orders the soldier who sounded the alarm to report.

“What’s going on, has the wall fallen? Undead broken through? Elite undead spotted?”

“Nothing that serious, sir. We did get a message from the wall that the undead are pressing harder than normal, but no elites or anything spotted yet.”

“So no reason to sound the alarm like that. You could’ve just come to me with this information.”

“Well, the centurion on the wall did send that it was urgent, sir. He asked for us to initiate preventive reinforcement strategy Gamma.”

“Alright, in that case your action was correct. Join your squad, then we’ll reinforce the wall.”

Almost immediately the century moves out towards the wall. Sam and her squad, together with trainer Quincy and soldier Don are told to follow behind the century, because there is no way that the squad can keep up with the stronger soldiers of the century.

Within moments the difference between the real soldiers and the recruits is clear. The recruits only have about half the stats of the lowest of the soldiers, and thus the soldiers move way faster than the recruits. While the century only takes about five minutes to reach the wall, the recruits need more than double that.

On the wall the century has taken up position to the right of the other century, thus doubling the soldiers on the wall, without mixing up the two centuries. In between the two centuries is some space where only the two centurions are standing.

By the time the squad arrives, everyone has already taken up position on the wall. As ordered, they join the two centurions in the middle.

“Centurions, where would you like us to observe?”

“Trainer Quincy, good of you to join us. Next time a bit quicker if you would.” The new centurion tells the trainer. “I’d like you and your recruits to position yourselves to take the center of the formation here. I know you are strong enough to hold here, especially with the recruits and that soldier to back you up. We will both join our centuries in the middle.”

“Sir, we’re only here to observe. These recruits are new, and have no place on the line.”

“Doesn’t matter, as the ranking officer I order you to join our forces on the wall. This looks like a big offence, so we need all the bodies we can get. If it costs us some recruits, so be it.”

With that the centurion leaves a fuming trainer behind, while the other centurion looks apologetic, but he leaves as well to join his century. Right after that Soldier Dan speaks up.

“I need to inform my centurion of this attack. You guys can hold the line right?”

Immediately the man tries to move back, unfortunately for him, trainer Quincy is quicker. He manages to catch the soldier by the back of his armor and prevents him from leaving.

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“Not so fast soldier Dan, you heard the centurion. We will hold this small part of the wall, and you will, as the second strongest, be my first backup.”

“Now hold up, me and my century are not on wall duty. We’re the only there as a backstop for when low leveled undead are getting through.”

“Hell no, your century is there to reinforce the wall when the other centuries are in trouble. The fact that your century is no way near ready is an affront to your entire legion. Luckily, you will be able to be the first one to show these recruits how it’s really done.”

The soldier doesn’t look to be all that happy about it, but he recognizes that he has no choice but to comply.

Soon after we find the squad in formation on the wall. On the wall it isn’t practical to have the ranged soldiers in the back, since they need to be able to shoot down into the massed undead. Unfortunately the squad hasn’t trained in wall defenses yet. Trainer Quincy quickly tells them the easiest formation, with a fighter alternate with an archer or mage. The trainer has soldier Dan, who is also a fighter, take the center place of the formation. He himself helps the recruits with some last minute information, and acts as a roaming officer. He will help out where needed, while the recruits gather some easy experience.

The fighters can’t do all that much from up here, and are mostly there to guard the archers and mages. Luckily, as a squad they share all experience gained during combat where they actually act as a squad.

Near them, some of the fighters from squads of the centuries actually jump down to deal damage. Since they have nowhere near the stats to do such actions, the fighters of their squad are only able to watch while the others do what they can.

Luckily, or actually unluckily depending on your view, they are soon called to action. The undead hordes consist mostly of zombies, which when killed deflate quite a lot. This means that it isn’t all that easy for them to walk over their killed predecessors to reach the top of the wall. The thing is, there are so many of them right now that they manage to climb on top of the ‘living’ undead. Thus it doesn’t take long before the first of them reach the top at some points.

One of these places is where Sam and her squad are, as they don’t have the same damage output as the real soldiers.

“They’re almost there!” Jasper shouts, just before he has to jump back to evade the claws of a zombie. As these are summoned creatures, they don’t follow all the rules of a living creature. Thus these humanoid zombies actually have claws.

Immediately Leophon stabs down to kill the zombie, but the creature doesn’t die like he expected.

“Hit their heads! I know we haven’t really gone over this, but you guys should know that you need to hit their heads to kill them!”

With the trainer yelling at him, Leophon recovers and smashes the pommel of his sword into the head of the undead. His hand smashes all the way into the head, splattering both Jasper and himself.

“Thanks Leo, I became an archer to stay away from this kind of filth.”

“Don’t whine, Jasper. Just shoot your damned arrows!”

In the meantime on the other end, Sam has her own troubles. She has managed to use her shield to defend the parapet, while Virgil near her shoots down his spells.

When a zombie manages to push her shield back she immediately stabs her sword right into its face. The zombie shrivels into itself, but the next one is already there to take its place. Soon she has to rush to keep back all the undead that manage to reach the top of the wall.

Only a minute or two after the undead reach the top, the squad is pushed back from the edge of the wall, with undead that swarm even over the parapet. Even soldier Dan is pushed back from the edge. He has some more statpoints than the recruits, but as a soldier who has only ever been in the fifth centuries camp, he is on the lower end of the requirements to become a soldier. Without a lot of support from the squad, he can’t hold the line.

Luckily trainer Quincy is not some simple pushover soldier or trainer. The man had almost reached the rank of Tribune before his army career ended due to politics, and he hasn’t lost his edge.

Even while he stays on the lookout for real dangerous undead, he swipes a few times with his sword, unleashing several of his combat skills one after the other. Having no actual magic, these consist of mostly of force blades, also called air blades, which cut right through the undead all the way to the ground. After a few of these the massed undead fall down with undead being killed all over the place. Within moments the squad manages to kill the few undead still on the wall and take up their positions once again.

Now that they have experienced the combat on the walls, they are a bit more prepared for the next rush of undead. With an unlimited supply of undead, they soon start to build up again at the bottom of the wall.