It all goes well for the first half hour or so, but things quickly begin to spiral out of control. We suffer a few breaches, forcing either me, Pops, or Jessica to rush in and contain them.
With my only real offensive skill being an area of effect attack, I'm not having a great time. The newly upgraded ground pound is strong, there's no denying that, but I’m afraid it would shake and weaken the walls. I don’t even risk using it, beating back the monsters the old fashioned way with help from a few others.
Mike swings by just as we finish killing the fifty or so monsters clawing in through the hole. He patches up the breach and bolts, tossing a few bombs into the horde outside as he goes.
I climb up on the wall and take a look outside. We have the thick main wall that encircles the safe zone, but the fields beyond it are a web of criss-crossing trenches and smaller walls. All of that helps break up the monsters, ensuring their numbers don’t get too dense in any one area. It turns the tide into a trickle, but even that trickle proves a lot for us to handle.
At the rate we’re going, it will take all night to finish the wave. It’s a war of attrition, and I’m afraid the monsters have the advantage. Besides having more bodies than us, they also don’t have to worry about things such as ammo or mana.
I take off running along the wall, swinging the sledgehammer at the monsters below. Each blow shatters bone and sends the creatures reeling back, but few of them actually die. Most only retreat. Even so, my frenzy steadily builds up.
As the rage seeps in, it urges me to jump outside and start slaughtering. Not a bad idea, we do need to start pushing back. My class is literally called Wavebreaker, so I need to do some wave breaking. I have to alleviate the pressure on our defenders and walls.
But I need to be smart about it.
I run around the perimeter until I come across Emily, and I motion for her to follow.
“I’ll go to the nearest choke point and jump out! Have my back, okay?!”
She gives me an incredulous look.
“I’ll just slam the horde with a ground pound and retreat,” I add.
Emily nods, so we take off together. I run on top of the wall, and she jumps from house to house inside of the safe zone. With every leap, I can see her expending mana. A weak aura forms around her, pushing her further than she should be able to jump by herself.
The wall curves steadily under my feet, then it takes a sharp turn. I’m nearing one of the choke points, so I nod towards it and jump outside. I have to get far enough from the main wall and the other defenders to not hit them with the ground pound, and while two hundred feet doesn’t sound like much under normal circumstances, it’s one hell of a distance across the monster infested no man’s land.
A handful of monsters leap on me right away, forcing me to start swinging. The sledgehammer catches the first one in the side of the head, swatting it out of the air. I use the momentum to spin and hit another one in the ribs. In the same movement, I backhand a third monster to keep it away.
The last two get through and nick me, claws and teeth taking chunks of flesh out of my flanks.
I take out the crowbar as well, and as the monsters reposition around me for another attack, I go on the offensive. I trigger a short dash to launch myself at the nearest creature, slashing with the crowbar as I go past. The chisel end bites into its hind leg and explodes out of its tail, lopping off a portion of its spine.
The monster behind it gets a sledgehammer between the eyes. Its neck crumples into its chest and it slumps over, dead.
Three quick thumps distract the others while I recover. As I turn to face them, I find arrow shafts poking out of their backs. I give Emily a thumbs up and get to work.
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It takes me longer than I expected to reach the horde funneling into the choke point, as I have to stop for a lot of small fights along the way. It’s never more than a handful of monsters at a time, but I inevitably suffer wounds after every altercation. I’m down at half health, but retreating wouldn’t do me any good.
I’d just need to work my way out here again.
I take a deep breath, channel a ground pound into the sledgehammer, and I activate a full length dash. The speed sends me crashing through a few walls in my way, and I bowl aside any monsters that try to approach me. As I reach the horde, I use one of the monsters to launch myself through the air.
I soar a good hundred feet over their heads, crashing down in the middle of them. Just for good measure, I trigger another full dash. The more momentum, the better. I bring all of the speed to bear, slamming a monster with the ground pound.
The shockwave is immense, eating all of my momentum like it’s nothing and bringing me to a dead stop. The whole world shakes as any monsters in my immediate vicinity go flying. The ones further away stumble, falling off their feet in swathes.
“Holy shit!”
I’m left alone in the epicenter, at the bottom of a shallow crater that's slick with the blood and guts of the monster I hit.
Wave successfully broken, I get ready to bolt. I disoriented the monsters, but I only killed a few of them. The others are quickly recovering, getting to their feet and turning towards me. But before I go, I take a look around. I see a towering figure in the distance, and we lock eyes for a heartbeat as it stares me down.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
That’s the wave boss.
It lets out a powerful roar that echoes far and wide through the night. More monsters appear from the distance, small groups rushing over to join the wave.
“Fuck.”
I take off running back towards the safe zone, using short dashes to ease my advance through the recovering horde. A bunch of cuts and scrapes later, I jump over the wall and land amid the shocked defenders.
“What are you staring at?! Go back out there and kill!” I yell.
They scurry back into the fight, picking off monsters before they can reorganize. I limp nearby and crash on a lawn, waiting to heal.
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Over the course of the next hour, I repeat the maneuver at the other choke points as well. I fight my way out, far enough from the main wall and the defenders, and I hit the hordes with momentum enhanced ground pounds. Then I quickly retreat and wait to heal before I do it all over again.
It helps somewhat, and with proper warning, our fighters can take full advantage of the distraction to kill dozens of monsters. I make sure to let them know what will happen beforehand so they won’t waste precious seconds staring in awe.
Some of it still happens, but it is what it is. I understand their reactions. Everyone has impressive skills by now, but a few of us are on a whole different level. Pops garners similar reactions after we meet up at one of the funnels, and we hit the monsters together with everything we have. I break their ranks with a ground pound, and he unleashes bullet hell from the mouth of the funnel, killing over a hundred monsters in seconds.
Hell, even I’m impressed with that.
But it still isn’t enough. Around half of the initial monsters are dead, but the boss just keeps calling more of them in. Bodies are piling up in the funnels, requiring the fighters to push the line forward so others can clear them out. The corpses get added to the walls like sandbags, then the fighters retreat and tighten the formation again.
I let myself fall on my back, staring at the night sky as I wait to heal. The moon is out, still orbited by its new metallic companion. Pops sits down next to me, and Emily joins us as well.
“Out of arrows?” I ask her.
She nods.
“Here.”
I pull out the ones I retrieved and hand them back to her, absently noting that the marked one isn’t among them. She didn’t use that one.
I turn my attention to Pops and ask, “losses?”
He shakes his head. “Let’s save that for the end.”
“Pops…”
“Fine,” he sighs. “Last I checked about half an hour ago, we had twenty three dead. By now, it’s probably closer to forty.”
“Anything else?”
“We’re running low on ammo again,” Pops continues. “About half of our gunmen are down to a quarter of the ammo they started with, so they retreated to the central hold like you told them to. The others have maybe another twenty minutes left in them. The machine guns stopped firing as well.”
“Shit.”
“Oh, and a bunch of the melee fighters came down with these two effects called exhausted and healing fatigue. They had to retreat as well.”
“Fuck, I forgot about those.”
“Forgot?”
I go on to explain that I suffered the same effects after the second boss battle, and I also tell Pops what exactly they mean. They completely slipped my mind in this chaos, so I failed to take them into account in case of a protracted defense effort. Now they’re fucking us over, and I wonder how many people we lost because their attributes took a significant hit out of the blue or their healing nearly stopped working.
This is what we need the doctors for, I realize. They can probably keep track of this through their ability to read those fancy health charts and pull people out of the fight before it’s too late. I discounted them as mostly useless in battle since they can’t directly heal people like their nurses, and that was a huge blunder.
I take a deep breath to calm my nerves and stifle my anger. Not much I can do about it now, I have to focus on what’s in front of me. On what I can still affect, and on ways to salvage the situation.
We won't survive if we keep on the defensive. It's only a matter of time before we run out of ammo and fighters, or until we suffer a breach we won't be able to contain. We have to flip the tables on the monsters, to go on the offensive fast and hard while we still can.
“We have to go out there again and kill the boss,” I say.
Pops shoots me a tired look, but he doesn't try to stop me like I thought he would. He just mumbles I figured under his breath.
“What, no complaining? No you can't go, it's too dangerous, didn't you learn your lesson the last time?”
Pops shakes his head. “The last time, we stood a decent chance to win even if we hunkered down. But this time, unless we kill that boss, we're screwed. I still don't want you to go, but what can I do? I gave up the right to complain when I accepted you as the leader.”
“Emily?”
She just nods.
I'm good to move a few minutes later, and as I get up, Jessica and Mike pass by on one of their perimeter rounds. I stop them for a quick chat, bringing them up to speed on what we'll attempt.
“I'm—” Jessica starts, but I cut her off.
“No. Both of you stay here and keep doing what you're doing.”
“Then why even tell us?” Jessica complains.
“Because I'll need Mike's help,” I answer. Then I turn to my brother, and I ask, “do you have enough dirt and wood left for a couple of walls?”
“I have some. Any specifics?”
“Two walls, about ten feet tall and, I don't know, three hundred feet long?”
“Thickness?”
“A foot should do.”
Mike thinks it over for a moment. Either that, or he's checking his interface. “I have the dirt, but not enough wood.”
“Good enough.”
“Where do you want them?”
“I'll let you know that when we're ready.”
He nods, then he and Jessica get ready to leave. But before they do, Pops pulls Mike aside. The two of them talk for a minute, and Mike passes Pops one of the bombs.
“What's that for?” I ask as we start walking.
“Call it an ace up the sleeve.”
I eye him with some suspicion. “Don't use it unless I say so.”
Pops chuckles and ruffles my hair as if I'm ten years old again. “Got it, boss.”