We spread the word about the plan, asking for any volunteers to gather at the central hold. I can’t take too many people and cripple our defenses, but I can’t take too few either. That didn’t work out too well for us the last time we faced a boss.
While we wait, some of the non combatants leave the central hold to ask me how it’s going. I tell them the truth, finding no point in lying. They can all see our fighters slowly retreating, so it’s better for everyone to hear it from me than to fester with worries. I’m not afraid of an uprising or anything like that, but you never know what desperate people might do.
The handful of runners I tasked with keeping William updated in the bunker return as well, but they don’t have much to report. Everything is as okay as it can be down there. The people are all inside, and the doors are locked up tight.
I breathe a sigh of relief. No matter what will happen up here, at least some of us will live to see another day.
“One last run,” I tell them. “William needs to know what we’re about to attempt.”
I explain the plan to them, and they’re off.
Volunteers start coming in, and it’s mainly the usual suspects. Derek and Carter are the first two, so I welcome them into the fold. I’ll gladly fight by their side any time. Chris, the tourist guy, joins us next. He only has one request, that we compensate him with some food and ammo so he’ll be able to leave Stelver once the siege is over.
“Where are you from? How far do you have to travel?”
“New York,” he sighs.
I think it over, but I don’t say anything. I was hoping he’s from somewhere nearby, then we could’ve arranged for a few guys to go with him. But New York is a bit too far away.
“Why leave so soon?” I ask instead. “Why not stay a little while longer and gain some levels?”
“I want to find my girlfriend and brother,” he says, eyeing Emily. “You know how it is.”
“Right.”
A few other people volunteer, including the solar mage. He’s a thirty year old single father named Cedric. His ten year old daughter, Sierra, convinced him to go for this class.
“She’s down in that bunker right now,” he says, giving me a tight hug. “My little girl is safe, thank you.”
I pat him on the back, and he pulls away. Then I try to get a read on him, but the analyze skill fails like it did on Pops a while back. Cedric gives me more details himself, revealing he’s only level 12. Not from a lack of trying, but simply because master and expert classes are just that difficult.
“Maybe you’ll get one or two levels from this,” I say.
He smiles sheepishly.
Mom leaves the hold as well, and after we bring her up to speed, she of course tries to stop me from going. The two of us argue about it for a couple of minutes, and she turns to Pops for support.
He shakes his head, so she mimics a pair of scissors with two fingers. “One quick snip, Tom! That’s all it takes!”
The others chuckle, but Pops turns white and nearly moves to cover his manhood with his hands. Seeing she won’t be getting her way, Mom puffs up and starts crying. She reluctantly buffs us again, then Pops takes her away.
The two settle next to the wall, out of earshot from us. They talk for a bit, then Pops hugs her and kisses her forehead. I can’t hear a single word they’re saying, but I’m willing to bet that Pops is assuring her it’ll all be okay and we’ll return alive in a bit. Somewhat placated, she returns to the hold.
“If either of you die,” she shouts before she gets out of sight, “I’ll kill the other one!”
Pops gives her a thumbs up, and I simply say, “love you too, Mom!”
We wait for a few more minutes, but we don’t get anyone else. The group is only eleven people, so I have to plan around that and hope it’ll be enough.
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We’re in the process of making a plan of attack around our skills when it happens. A loud crash followed by a mighty boom reverberates through the safe zone, and I turn in time to see slabs of dirt and shattered logs flying towards us from the south.
“Take cover!”
Everyone runs around to dodge the chunks of debris that come raining down on us. Pops and Cedric shoot them out the air with their skills, but plenty make it through and hit the walls of the central hold. They’ll crush the people inside, so on a whim, I activate dash and rush ahead. I bring out the sledgehammer, load a ground pound into it, and I hit one of the chunks as it’s about to land on me.
The shockwave fills the street, pushing the rest of the debris back and forcing it to crash out of the air. Like I feared, the skill is strong enough to rattle the defensive walls and stagger my own guys. A few of them fall off their feet, stunned for a few seconds.
“What the hell was that?” Derek shouts.
“That was our cue to get going!”
I order the others to stay on high alert, then I take my team towards the source of the explosion. We get there a couple of minutes later to find a good portion of the wall gone, monsters flooding into the safe zone as the few nearby defenders try to beat them back.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
The wave boss stands tall in the ruins of the wall, its beady eyes scanning the streets and houses in front of it. I expect it to charge at us, but it lets out a huff and turns tail. The temptation to chase after it as it retreats is immense, but I hold myself in check.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
We join the fray, giving it our all to hold back the tide. I dash from one place to the next, slamming into monsters and using the occasional ground pound. Carter runs around to create fire traps, dancing through the resulting flames as his skin turns red hot. Derek works together with Cedric, using his mass aggro skills to gather the monsters so Cedric can take them all out with lances of plasma and bursts of light.
Pops and Emily take positions on nearby rooftops, creating a kill zone between them where they stack bodies.
I run out of mana first and am forced on the backfoot. Shortly after, Emily runs out of arrows. I’m set upon by a large group, my frenzy surging as I fight tooth and nail to get out.
Give in, the rage cooes. Let me out.
I bite my tongue and try to force it down, but I trip and stumble. One of the monsters, a ball of bloody fur and angry claws, jumps on my back. It slashes me like a tornado of razor wire, and I can’t get it off. I’m about to give in to the rage, hoping it’ll save me, when Cedric falls out of the sky next to me.
He takes a wide stance, arms held out at his sides, and he yells sorry! In the next moment, the world explodes in a ball of light and heat. Any nearby monsters get vaporized, reduced to blackened skeletons. The others get pushed away by the surge of blazing air rushing out.
It's so bright that I can see the bones in my arms even through my closed eyelids.
My backside gets burned to a crisp and my health falls like a stone, but I survive. The monster on my back shields me from the brunt of Cedric’s skill.
He grabs me, throws me over his shoulder, and he starts running away. Derek and Carter join up with him to help our retreat.
“I…can still…walk…” I grumble, pushing off of him to land on my feet.
My legs can barely hold me, but I don’t let that dissuade me. I take a deep breath, gritting my teeth against the pain as the system healing kicks in.
“Tell everyone to retreat!” I shout. “Get to the secondary fallback points!”
“What about us?!” Pops asks.
“We have to wait here for Mike and Jessica!”
In the distance, one of the machine guns comes to life. It spews bullets into the horde, but not even half of them are killing shots.
Shit, shit, shit!
My mana regenerates somewhat, so I stop and turn around. I hit one of the monsters on our tail with a ground pound, killing it and staggering the others. But it’s useless, they don’t stop pouring in through the breach. They fill the streets, breaking up around the houses in search of prey.
Like water pouring into a maze, they go every which way.
It’s now or never. We have to go out there to kill the boss.
“Cedric, I don’t know what the hell that was, but do it again if you can! Try to contain them!”
Cedric nods and throws a few more plasma lances into the horde. He doesn’t even have to bother aiming them, there are enough monsters to guarantee a few hits.
“That was called coronal mass ejection!” He answers. “And this is coronal shield!”
He casts the skill, and a notification flashes before me.
Cedric Armstrong - Level 12 Solar Mage has cast Coronal Shield on you.
“It’ll burn any monsters that come near you guys!” He quickly adds as my skin starts glowing.
I look around to see the others have similar glows around them. Digging through the notifications and status effects, I find more details.
Skill: Coronal Shield.
Description: The majestic power of the sun envelops you and up to five of your allies, offering protection against incoming physical attacks. Anything that dares approach will be burned with impunity and forced to retreat, or risk death.
Effects: produces a shield of hot plasma that lashes out at any non-allied entities, dealing ongoing damage at a rate of 100 per second.
Duration: 2 minutes.
One of the monsters charges at me, giving me a demonstration of the shield. As soon as it gets within range, which is about five feet, a loop of plasma extends out of me. It looks familiar, like a miniature rendition of the magnetic loops I've seen in a million books and documentaries about the sun.
The monster yelps as the heat singes its fur. It goes to pull back, limping as a limb turns to ash, but I don't let it. I charge and, with a horizontal swipe of the sledgehammer, I finish the job.
“This is so fucking cool!” I yell, suddenly flooded by regret that I didn't pick solar mage myself.
“You think that's cool?” Cedric starts, and I have to brace my soul for another blow. “Watch this!”
He produces another plasma lance, but he doesn't throw it. Instead, he grips it like a sword and slashes at an approaching spider monster. The tightly coiled plasma burns through its front legs like a lightsaber, cutting them off. Cedric spins, dodges the follow-up attack from the monster, and stabs the lance in the middle of its head.
I lose my metaphorical shit. “Give me one of those!”
“Can't. The moment I let go, it'll explode.”
That sucks, but it is what it is. We both refocus, group back up with the others, and we wade back into the horde. Cedric's skills are amazing, but it doesn't take me long to see their weakness.
He burns through mana like a rocket and runs out in half a minute.
I tell him to stay back, to conserve his mana and keep the coronal shields up for as long as possible.
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Mike and Jessica find us a few minutes later, surrounded by a ring of monster corpses. We hold a tight circle, cycling our melee fighters in and out as they need to recuperate.
“Did the other groups pull back from the choke points?” I ask Mike.
He nods. Jessica fans out her pets to harass the monsters, giving us the chance to catch our breaths. Mike wants to plug up the breach, but I stop him. There's no point. Half the horde already got in, and with the entrances unguarded, the others are unimpeded as well.
“Bring up those walls,” I order instead. “Make them parallel to each other, with ten feet between them. Get them to go as far out as you can.”
The plan is to run between the walls and avoid the horde altogether. We have to get out fast, and expend as little energy, ammo, and mana as possible on the way. We have to be in top shape once we reach the boss and start the fight.
Mike raises his hands and activates one of his skills. Mana pours out of him into his surroundings, invisible to the naked eye at first. I can only feel its pressure, the shifting of the ambient currents. More mana condenses out of the atmosphere, forming a faint cyan mist in the shape of the soon to be built walls.
The next skill activates, filling the mana blueprints with the materials Mike has absorbed and stored. In seconds, the packed dirt walls appear out of thin air. It was impressive the first time I saw it, and it’s still impressive now.
“Done,” Mike says, all out of mana.
I nod in thanks. “Go back to the central hold and help there. We’ll try to make it quick.”