Chapter 30 – Fighting For Your Life

The first group of hounds arrived. It was a group of seven hounds, this made it seven versus six as apart from the six fighters the others were all up on the gallery.

Just like the first group they had fought down in the dungeon, these hounds were smart enough to understand the danger of just rushing at the defensive formation of the fighters. This meant that the squad had to go on the offense. Because if they waited out be hounds, another group would arrive from the portal.

"Xanthe quick, use an ice blast to get them moving!" Jasper yelled.

Almost immediately the mage sent a big bolt of ice towards the group of hounds. Unfortunately this didn’t have the effect that they had hoped. The creatures were fast enough to dodge the bolt, even though it did explode upon contact. The hounds just moved away a bit and kept their distance.

Only moments later the second group of hounds emerged from the portal.

“Shit, those pests get here a lot faster than the others!”

“Yeah, but you have to admit, them move a lot quicker than slugs. So not that strange that they move up the floors a lot faster.”

“Maybe, but I still don’t have to like it.”

There wasn’t time for them to speak more, as the double sized group of hounds had gained enough courage to attack the defensive formation of the recruits.

With loud howls the fourteen hounds charged at the shield wall. Their attack almost looked like it was planned by a human, as six of the hounds each targeted one of the recruits, while the others split up and flanked. With four hounds on both sides, the recruits would have no chance to defend themselves.

The hounds that attacked them on the front, mostly feinted at the recruits. Only the hound that attacked Sam, who was on the left end of their shield wall, didn’t feint. It jumped at her shield, thinking that as the smallest human in the line she would be an easy target. Unfortunately for it, Sam wasn’t the system-less woman she had been earlier this year, neither was she still much weaker than her fellow squad mates.

The moment the hound attacked, she noticed the feint. Thus she did the opposite of what they were taught. She unlocked her shield, giving her more mobility. This gave her enough room to move back and lift her shield to catch the hound on it. At the same time she deftly stuck her sword in the hound, killing it immediately.

With her first opponent gone, she could focus on the four hounds that tried to flank them on her side. The other four weren’t her problem, so she hoped that the guard would help them out. Her attention had to be on the hounds that were already way too much trouble for her to fight on her own.

When the group of four hounds on the right side started to flank the recruits, the guard immediately took action. A moment later he had seen that one of the recruits took care of one of the hounds and took up position to defend against the flanking hounds. This gave him enough of an opportunity to take out the other group of hounds.

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With a speed that was way above that of the recruits, he jumped forward and killed two hounds with one swipe of his sword. Before the other two hounds even knew that they were under attack, he dispatched the third hound with a stab. The last one he bashed with his shield, tossing it back towards the dungeon portal.

Having taken care of the flanking hounds, he turned his attention back towards the rest of the battle. The first thing he noticed was that most of the recruits were still stuck in their defensive position due to the feints of the hounds in front of them. Only the recruit on the left end of the line had managed to kill her hound, and was now dueling two other hounds. The other two flanking hounds were already down, one with an arrow in its head, and the other was limping back with one of its legs missing. With their numbers halved, the guard opted to wait and see how the recruit would handle the last two hounds.

Sam had been surprised when the first of the hounds was killed by one of the archers. Up till now the hounds had been erratic enough to dodge every arrow or magic attack that was sent their way. Only the fact that these hounds were attacking her, split their attention enough for the archers to manage a hit.

Then the hounds attacked, but two of them got in each other’s way, thus giving her an opportunity to attack. Only the last hound wasn’t hindered, and thus was the first one to attack her. When it attacked her, she bashed her shield in its face, and she managed to slash it on its leg.

Once more she was surprised, as she sliced all the way through the leg, cutting it off and making the hound fall down. She didn’t get the chance to finish it off, but at least it was now a lot less dangerous than the others. Speaking of the others, the two hounds had finished their brawl and advanced on her once more.

With two attackers she could only block one of them with her shield. While bracing herself to push back against the weight of that hound, she still had to figure out what to do with the second one. With the hound mainly using its bite to attack, the only thing she could think of was the instinctive one. Thus she simply put her sword right into the mouth of the hound.

She did get both puncture and burn marks on her hand, but the hound was immediately down with a sword in its brain. Now though, she didn’t have her sword to kill the last hound. After bashing it back with her shield two more times, she finally thought of a way to kill it.

“Jasper! Next time I down this thing, kill it for me, okay?”

“Sure Sam, we just thought you were having fun!”

Grumbling a bit about the idiot archer, she readied herself for one final round with the hound. Soon after it jumped at her again, only to be put down hard by a perfectly timed counter from Sam. Immediately it was finished off by a well-placed arrow.

Now that she had time to look around, Sam noticed that most of the hounds were already killed. Only three were still feinting at the others. But then another group of hounds exited the portal, and immediately went off to help the others. Quickly Sam moved back to her place on the left side of the shield wall, hoping that this time she wouldn’t need to fight off that many hounds. By now she was exhausted.

The guard nodded approvingly at the female recruit on the left flank. She had fought off a total of five fire hounds, and that on the first day that their squad was allowed on the fourth floor of the dungeon. She did gather a decent amount of wounds, and actually forgot to get her sword back after dispatching the last hound with the help of one of the archers. That meant that she would need some extra training, but luckily that wasn’t his job.

Thinking that he could use them to defend against this entire floor of dungeon monsters with how the recruits had fought, he decided to give them a moment to rest and maybe reshuffle their formation. Quickly he jumped right over the shield wall and killed hounds left and right. In only a minute or two he killed every last one of them.

“Well done, while we wait for the next group of hounds, you guys should switch positions. The one on the left won’t last another attack, especially without her sword. You might also think about a different way to counter those flankers. Hounds are too smart to just brainlessly jump at a shield wall.”