"They're doing what?" Anthony said. "Circling the city?"
"No, encircling it," Valerie said.
Anthony gave her a contemptuous look. He had been a father before and she was being the kind of kid that answered a question with a question. This was not a good look for the Princess General. The forward command base where all the Chosen had been shuffling in and out of was very close to the front lines. The fact that they even had front lines was a big change.
They had been fighting zombies for almost a year by the time they were ready to approach the Capitol City. It was the first time that they were actually facing resistance and not immediately running away. Running away from zombies kept you alive. Although Anthony loved large earthen works that his girlfriend had put up all over the place, these zombies were not taking the bait.
"They're not dumb. They know what's going on here. They're planning something," he said. "Are cards fireproof by the way?"
"Our airships aren't even here yet and you're already trying to deploy them?" Cedric said from across the table.
It was that weird time in between meetings and receiving reports. When they had sent out the new guidance and were only waiting to hear back about requisition requests for the day. It would have been a good use of Anthonys time to go and shoot a bunch of holy magic bolts and get some target practice in. Unfortunately for him, and you're constant stream of dwarfs head come by to get healed. Not enough for him to be constantly working on them, but enough that he couldn't leave his post for too long.
He missed his cabin and the airship that had been given to the seventy sixth legion in Sunderland. The Caravan would be getting its own airship refitted with all the lessons learned from Gloucester soon. They had really stripped out every single large sailing vessel. They could to use the wood for existing ships or to create floating platforms.
"Coming through," One of the guards in front of the tent said. Two dwarfs came in with a stretcher. An animated dwarf yelled incoherently as they placed the stretcher on the ground.
"We can Like I bloody told you guys. It's nothing but a tiny wound and you had better. Let me go back to the front lines now....oh hey it's a human...where did all of this blood come from?"
Anthony knelt next to the wounded dwarf.
An arrow had clearly pierced through at least two lobes of the dwarfs lung. Anthony, who had been a quick study of Dwarven anatomy was impressed at how much volume that dwarf could still muster when he had only had about half of his remaining air capacity. The shafts of the crossbow bolts or arrow had gone through his chest plate But did not reach through to the other side. Pulling apart the dwarves armor keep even as he complained, Anthony cast a diagnostic spell.
It was amazing how fast he got an idea for the internals of the dwarf.
"Hey guy, you could have died. If your friends told you to come here and see me and they had to strap you down to this stretcher as I see... They had to strap down all four of your limbs to get here?"
The yelling stopped. The dwarfs looked up to Anthony and golfed.
"I don't want to die, Chosen."
"Valerie, pull on three," Anthony said. Valerie got into position.
"Nononono..." the dwarf said, closing his eyes.
"One.... three!"
Valerie pulled the crossbow bolt out of the dwarfs. Once she had it clear, Anthony compressed the dwarfs chest. He poured Mana into it to try to heal the wound. He would have words with whatever dwarf had done this. They were probably doing something and had a friendly fire accident.
It took nearly a full minute for him to close up the door's chest carefully putting it so that he wouldn't be internally bleeding anytime soon. He nodded to Valerie.
"Whoever did this to him, I need to see them now. I also need to see someone with the cleanse skill."
The two dwarves next to him who had been carrying the stretcher had collapsed on the ground next to the now sedate dwarf.
"Alright, was it one of you two that fucking did this?" Anthony said, standing up from his kneeling position. The two dwarves both looked at him, shell shocked.
"Sir, you'll pardon me," one said. "It wasn't one of the legion."
Anthony stared down the dwarf. There was only one other potential group that could do this and he was about to have words with them.
"Which one of the Chosen did this?" He said narrowing his eyes and getting up to go.
"Sir," be increasingly pale and frantic said. "It wasn't one of ours."
Understanding dawned upon Anthony slowly, like a subway train that wasn't running express service.
"Fuck."
----------------------------------------
Bob, Mork's frontier fighter, had seen a lot in his day. He had been through the two financial crashes, the pandemic, and that was all before he had been invited onto reality television. It was safe to say that he had seen a lot of things in his time. This new development, however, where he was trying to find his footing bothered him. There were no mentors for his position. He was just doing the best he could and trying to make it work.
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So of course Mork, The guy to death had been very overbearing with his quests. It was almost like he wanted to get all the glory without including any of the other gods.
He would never say it out loud for fear of being smited, but he did really want a break. Sonya got to talk to her. Patron and her patron spoke back. Sophie got to talk to her patron and her patron didn't talk back. Mork gave cryptic messages and quests to do things that he would get special rewards from and that was about it. It wasn't terrible but when he got a quest to kill five intelligent Undead and he wasn't expecting any of them anywhere nearby, it gave him a small thrill.
Quest defeat five intelligent Undead. Time limit 20 minutes.
The fact that he had been given a quest meant that it was possible. The addition of a time limit meant that he might be walking into an ambush.
Two months ago he would have scoffed at the idea of an ambush except from a death knight. Now he was afraid that he would be getting more and more ambushes. He was further afraid that it wasn't going to be him receiving the ambushes. He at least could detect the zombies when they came by. Everyone else was kind of lost in the sauce.
But it was the fact that he was able to detect zombies around him. They gave him the biggest fright. He could attack zombies within around 3 mi which is a large distance. He probably couldn't run that far in that minutes, which meant something else was going on. He held up a signal for the scouts to halt. Then they all crouched in the under brush. If there really was an ambush, he did not want to walk into it.
If they were going to bait him out, they were going to have to put in the work. Bob did not walk into ambushes lightly.
"What's going on? Bob? Quest?" Stella said.
Behind Bob and Stella, twelve dwarves which he was pointedly not calling by any nearly trademarked names waited. Hi could of course call Stella Snow White whenever he wanted.
"I got a quest. Kill five intelligent undead in less than twenty minutes. The problem is that I'm not detecting any right now. The quests have never triggered for something impossible. It's always possible."
"A twenty minute time limit and there are none in range?" She said. "Fuck where was that road?"
The dwarf behind her pointed to a direction that they hadn't traversed in a while.
"What are you thinking, Stella?" He said.
"I'm thinking that I'm in charge right now. Follow me."
It took nearly five minutes according to Bob's clock to get to the well worn road. They had been avoiding the roads, trying to head up along a dry creek bed. With Stella in the lead, Bob moved to her left side. He kept a distance far enough to shoot a crossbow bolt, but near enough to close the gap with his spear.
Stella pass the word to get down and then Bob felt his pathfinder card ping. The zombies were moving fast, if his skill was an indication. Too fast to be on foot. They were heading in their direction, or perhaps just along the road.
Of course they would take the road. Zombies didn't worry about enlightened, they just kept moving, looking for food. Tapping Stella's leg, Bob pointed in the direction of the fast approaching zombies.
Then Stella held up the hand signal to prepare their weapons. Though they only had enough crossbows for half of the squad, each dwarf had gotten a master class in their usage. They were proficient in it. If you even had skills and those are the ones that generally carry the crossbows. Everyone else just carried extra bolts no matter what.
As I waited it was clear that something was coming. I'm bothered here. A car rumbling down the road and he began to think about what it would take for a legion of zombies to figure out how to make carts work. They had to figure out how to get the zombie horses or regular horses to pull them along a road. Then they had to have enough intelligence for these things to work together. Then they had to find a road and go down it. I doubt they wouldn't be able to make their own roads or their own carts so they had to do with what they already had. It was a chilling. Thought to think that they might be able to make their own cards at some point in time.
As they waited, the sounds we were closer and was clearer and clear that the songs would be arriving with the wagon whenever it arrived. And that was when Paul got his first glimpse at the green tinted Undead horse pulling a cart with four zombies in the back.
If it was one short, then he was going to be pissed. Stella gave the fire at will command.
All along the outside of the road dwarves prepared card skills. Bob, Betty just crossbow aiming for one of the front legs of the horse and when it finally got into range, he used skill to shoot out and break. Its femur. At the same time. Six other crossbow wolves flew two of them striking true. Bob was already summoning his Eldritch card collecting summon. Even as the cart squeezed to a halt. Two zombies jumped out and brandished swords as they started approaching the cops of trees that they were hidden under. Faster than he thought they could go, they cleared the distance in between and Bob found himself loading another vault and shooting automatically like he often did. Did. Once again he aimed for a leg trying to forestall the zombies reaching him in any short time frame. He was able to easily kneecap his second hit, and it slumped down. Finding zombie lunged at the first dwarf online.
My fist wasn't fast enough to stop it and he could hear a terrifying crunch as it appeared the zombie was trying to to chew into the dwarves arm. As this dwarf was only about 20 ft in front of him, Bob took out his third and hopefully final bolt and then hit it straight in the head. As soon as he loos the bolt from his crossbow, he dropped it. His dwarven sling kept it on his back as he picked up his spear.
Bob was the man who liked to watch horror films back on Earth, so he always did a double tap whenever he encounted a zombie. However, he was the most highly skilled in magical healing. So before he went to do his double tap, he was going to need to check on the dwarf that had lost a big chunk of flesh on his left arm. Bob was terrified to see that it looked like the zombie had been through to the bone.
He thrust his spear through the zombies head and chest quickly before resetting and pushing man into the man's arm. It wasn't just the healing touch that he was trying to get. He was trying to get a regenerative healing so that regrow after he disinfected it. Disinfection was just one layer of the healing he was applying.
"Tell to me straight, Chosen. Am I going to live?" He said, fear in his eyes.
"Keep the faith, brother," Bob said.
He found that unless he said to these guys a little less painful, it was when they would potentially die. As such, he had trouble whenever I wanted to introduce them to himself and tell him the life stories. Sure, he would listen to the last stories, what else would say to do in a long campaign, but it was hard when you knew somebody and they lost a big chunk of their arm. Arm. You felt what they felt along with them.
"Thank you," was his response. Wasn't he able to feel how much better it was without an open gaping wound that could turn into a zombie infection? Or was he just thinking about his own time. Bob and so far gotten out unscathed, but he felt like his luck was going to run dry soon. He could only do so much and he was becoming more and more important to the mission.
"Get to the back of the pack. Get your spear up. You're going to be heading home for a bit after this, no excuses. Common Sense has been chasing you but you've always been faster."
Stella rolled her eyes as she came in to check on the door for self. She waved to the back of the squad. Short order, both Bob and Stella were able to double tap the zombies, ensuring that they wouldn't have any surprises. Except for his birthday, probably hated surprises. Especially as a guy who made the cake, those were the worst surprises.
Common Sense had been chasing him before and not getting to him, but now he was trying to be methodical leader and doing the best for the seventy sixth legion.
"Well fuck they have fucking carts now and horses? This is getting ridiculous."
He checked his quest card.
"Hey! The horse is still alive!" He yelled.
*Thunk.*
"Thank you so much! Ooo, shiny!"