Chris

Jonathan, Austin, and I stood front and center against the thralls exiting the gate with the rest of the warriors either next to us or behind us.

Due to the sheer amount of thralls in the camp, there were still groups of them inside the walls trying to squeeze through the gate. The trebuchets and Artillery Mage kept up their fire even as the minions closed in since there were so many to target.

Giant explosions from traps and electrical implosions sounded out as the minions walked through the traps we had set. We were told electricity was their weakness and we used that to our advantage.

Most of the traps we brought with us were essentially EMPs. The electrical explosions were the best bang for our buck regarding effectiveness against the thralls.

It zapped the control out of them and made them stand still without any orders for them to act on. Damien had gone into extensive length about the effects lightning had on them.

He was... enthusiastic about his affinity. Anything about lightning had the guy talking for hours.

He did have useful information and we put that to good use. We took every scrap of information we could to use it to our advantage. But that was before.

The plan was made and already in motion and there were no more plans to be had, no more that I had to worry about.

My job was to fight and to fight well.

So that was what I did.

All my skills came alive and billowed out of me sapping the heat from the air, I stood ahead of the rest to keep the effects focused on my enemies.

Austin was off to my left and Jonathan was to my right doing the same. Our three best fighters would be the tide breakers while the rest stood behind us ready to catch the overflow.

I didn't intend for there to be any overflow.

[Permafrost(Un)], [Hail(C)], and [Ice Manipulation(Un)] were already in motion and my hammer started singing.

Even though these were merely thralls I wouldn't take them lightly.

As [Permafrost(Un)] drained my mana to deepen the effects, [Glacial Presence(R)] started increasing my abilities. The temperature dropping enough to activate the skill.

All of it added together to have me smashing heads as quickly as I could. The thralls were weak but numerous and my sweeping hammer swings took multiple down at once.

Austin's light beams were being shot off from over on his side but I couldn't see what Jonathan was doing. His skills didn't have the same flair as Austin's or the impact that mine did.

With the mass of bodies rushing toward us, I treated it as yet another wave.

I was good at fighting waves.

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The Mindbreaker(Craig)

Sweat ran down his brow as he sat and stared out the window. Fires raged around him but the stone keep where he resided was immune to the flame making the heat merely an annoyance. All of it had been going to shit lately and it was only getting worse.

He had been caught unprepared for the attack and he was so flustered he failed to respond quickly enough. The attack on his capital had been unexpected.

He thought only an idiot would attack him and if they did, it surely wouldn't be so soon.

He was wrong.

Only a fool would attack his capital and when he saw who it was he couldn't help but sneer. 30 people, if that. Barely a handful had come and they thought they were going to defeat him. HIM!

And it was the one who had chased him! Oh, he was looking forward to what was coming. He wasn't the same person he was a few weeks ago and he had made a breakthrough.

He had yet to test his new skills fully but these people were the perfect guinea pigs.

He had been building up an army for nearly three months and if these people thought that he would go down easily they were wrong.

Craig wasn't stupid and he had made up for his mistake earlier. Numbers weren't everything and he had been made aware of that fact and it was time to show these people their folly.

His camp was at the corner of the tutorial. The corner.

He had ready access to strong monsters to dominate and he had done so without rest. He was building up a force to wipe through all the survivors of the tutorial and these people only brought 30.

He raised his hands and started to conduct. A phantom song in his head took the lead and his orchestra rushed to follow his cues.

His army wasn't as weak as they thought it was and he couldn't wait to see his song come to fruition.

He didn't want to miss this.

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Abigail

Everything was going smoothly so far and that made her nervous. The plan was being executed and there was nothing for her to do. No one needed healing and everyone was where they should be.

There was nothing left to plan and no one left to direct. Everyone was already doing their part in the battle- some more than others.

A 20-meter area of frost bloomed into being ahead of the warriors and bodies flew every which way out of it. Crushed and mutilated bodies littered the area and she couldn't help but think Chris was taking this seriously.

They had cards they could still play if things went sideways but something about the whole situation was bugging her. Abigail knew that it shouldn't be this easy. They were at the man's doorstep decimating his army, something should be going wrong.

Whether it was fate or coincidence, Kathy suddenly tensed beside Abigail before stuttering over words trying to get them out too quickly.

"More, there's more that were outside the camp. A whole horde of them are coming from the North!" She shouted out.

Abigail unrolled a map of the area to have Kathy point out where the new threat was coming from and the woman quickly did. Seeing their direction, they would have to split up to face them.

Abigail was just about to rearrange everyone when Kathy's sudden intake of breath stopped her.

"There's more!"

The scene repeated and Abigail was confronted with a grim scene. They had severely underestimated the Mindbreaker and did not have a full accounting of their numbers.

Three arrows represented the forces that were charging toward them. The monsters hidden in the North coming down, thralls escaping the southern gate of the camp coming from the Northeast, and this new force, coming from the East.

This fight was about to get dicey.

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Kathy

Kathy wasn't prepared for the images she was seeing through her birds. They were going to be overwhelmed. The thought of running away was hard to ignore and she had to fight her natural reaction to what she was seeing.

The thralls she had scouted in the camp weren't even half of it. The Mindbreaker had pulled more out of nowhere and there were countless closing in on them. She was still trying to get a good count as they closed in from outside the tutorial bounds.

The numbers kept climbing and the longer it took to get an estimate, the dimmer their outcome looked.

The whole time, she hurried to explain what she was seeing to the others and mark on the map where the new force was coming from. The information was disseminated among the fighters and everyone was made aware of the new threat.

Kathy couldn't keep up with all of the changes she was seeing but she was trying her best. Things were constantly being added and the people started talking over each other coming up with ideas on how to deal with it.

Even while the fight with the leading thralls raged, more were making their way toward the fight. What was a trickle of enemies now, was about to become a tsunami.

Before she could say anything else, she felt a disturbance through her birds and watched as four figures concealed in shadows appeared in their ranks. The four shadows appeared right behind the strongest members of their forces.

Right behind Jonathan's stone-clad form, Austin, Rachel, and Christopher's ice-covered back.

Kathy didn't even get a chance to say anything before the figures attacked and daggers plunged down on their targets.

Gasps of surprise and cries of pain sounded out and Rachel disappeared in a burst of fire reappearing a few feet away with a dagger in her back, barely missing her heart.

"Rogues!"

Austin was quick enough to dodge the fatal blow but the dagger scored a deep cut through his side, parting his armor with ease.

Jonathan and Chris were both unprepared for the surprise attack and took the full brunt of it, both of their elemental armors parting before the blades.

Enchantments on the weapons flashed and Kathy saw through her birds as blood was drawn from both of the mighty tanks she thought invulnerable.

Mass panic sounded out from the surprise and Kathy heard a skill being shouted from somewhere, she wasn't certain who.

"[Revealing Light]"

The shadows around the figures were burned away and revealed their full forms to everyone. After the light illuminated the area, the figures were swiftly killed in retaliation.

They fell easily to attacks and didn't seem to have any defensive skills, only proficient in stealth and assassination.

"What was that?"

"Were those assassins?"

Speculation and thoughts ran wild and even the swift retaliation didn't calm people's nerves. This was the first time any of them had dealt with an assassination attempt.

None of the monsters during the waves were stealth experts and this was the first time seeing something like this for many.

All the rogues they knew strayed away from the stealth and assassination route and went a different direction with their class. It seemed that some didn't follow that sentiment and were now assassins in the Mindbreaker's army.

Just when it couldn't get worse, they had to worry about being stabbed in the back.

Worry spread through the ranks like wildfire. They were beset by countless monsters and assassins just attempted to take out their strongest. Cries of pain sounded out after the attack.

Rachel had a gaping wound on her side that healers rushed to attend to. The other three weren't as lucky. They were on the front lines fighting, healers couldn't go out there safely to heal them.

Some ranged heals fell on them but from the severity of the wounds, not much was healed. Chris and Jonathan still hadn't taken the daggers out.

Abigail had to be held back from going to heal her husband from the dagger that was still in his back. New battle lines were set up and people prepared for the new threat revealed to them. Shouting and explosions sounded out making giving orders all the harder.

Shit was hitting the fan and it was hitting it fast.

"Austin! You take the North." Kathy heard Chris yell out, "Jonathan, take the East!"

"I need healing!" Jonathan yelled back.

"Retreat to the healers, I can hold them until you get back," Chris answered.

Austin moved to cover his new direction while Jonathan made a fighting retreat to the healers. The frozen circle grew to accommodate their moving and covered the spot that was left vacant, extending to nearly two thirds of the battle front. Blades and chunks of ice whistled through the air holding off the majority of the monsters.

Nothing was said but Kathy could see the knife sticking out of the ice armor that encapsulated him. She knew where it was plunged and it was right in the middle. There was no chance that it missed the heart or if it had, it hit something else important.

Jonathan got in range of her normal hearing, not her birds, and she saw as the healers started fussing over him. They pulled the knife out of his back and all three layered healing skills onto the wound.

"How did it get through?" Jonathan asked, he seemed bewildered something was able to penetrate his armor.

"The knife has enchantments on it but I can't tell what it does, Chris would know but we can't go and ask him. They must have used some armor-penetrating skill or something." Abigail answered with the dagger in her hand.

"We need to be prepared for it to happen again. I doubt those are the only Rogues he has in his army." Sam, the other Healer, said.

"What are we going to do? We will be overwhelmed at this rate." Jonathan said.

"We have our contingency plans to fall back on and we still have the extra consumables we can use. If we fall back, we might be able to hold out." Abigail muttered, trying to figure out the best course of action.

All the while, the monsters threw themselves at the front line and the reinforcements charging at them were about to get here.

"There, it's not perfect but it will do for now. We can't waste any more time, the monsters are almost here." Sam said, cutting off her healing skill, the green glow diminishing.

Jonathan got up and ran off to the East, where the new enemies were about to hit them from.

From the bird she had kept near Christopher, just in case he shouted something important, Kathy heard something she didn't think was meant for her.

"Austin!"

"Yeah!"

"I need you to keep them safe! Run if you have to, but I need you to promise me!"

"What? What are you on about?"

"Promise me!"

"Alright! I promise to keep them safe."

Kathy had a feeling Chris was about to do something stupid.