“So the melee squad managed to close the gates. The injured were brought to the medical encampment, and the corpses were given a proper funeral?” Bradley asked Ben after waking up. “Yea that’s pretty much all that happened. We filled up our water to last us another week or so.”
Bradley sighed, “How many did we lose?” Ben smiled, “We only lost two. Your strategy worked really well Brad.” Bradley shook his head, “Any talent we lose is a detriment to future missions. Whose Squad did they belong to?” “We lost a swordsman from Squad 2 and a Shielder from Squad 4.” Bradley sat up, “I guess I can’t ever send them solo until we can fill in the gaps. The balance is messed up.”
“How is Trisha managing her post? I’d assume Kathy is there for some initial recovery too.” Ben nodded, “Both are doing pretty well, and all of the critically wounded are now stable.” “Any signs of another healer based on the group of nurses?” Ben shook his head, “Not yet, but that doesn’t mean it can’t happen.”
Bradley swung himself out of the medical bed, “What about the numbers of enemies?” Ben flipped through his sheet, “It seems like over half of the goblins are dead now, but most of the orcs and ogres are still fine. They have gathered at Gate 10 where we’ve been leaving and going to.”
From that point on, magicians and classless fired over the walls, and the mission done previously was repeated from different gates to make the task easier. For the next three weeks on the dot they sent Squad 0 out to gather more water and collect more corpses to feed the population. Whether it was lucky or unfortunate, the numbers had been thinned out initially making these missions less frequent than they’d need to be otherwise. The city of 200,000 or so was reduced to no more than 30,000.
After three week, the number of trained members of the Squadrons rose from about 200 to 1000, most of which were classless. With the ammo shortage becoming apparent, classless were forced to train in hand to hand combat, some even became main squad material and bumped up to Squad 1-6. The casualties stopped after the goblins hoarded by specific gates instead of entirely encircling the city. The goblins were slowly reduced down almost to nothing. By June 5th all that was left were a few Orcs, a few goblins, and around 20 ogres.
All that was left was one final extermination mission to finish this siege and Bradley knew it. “Magic doesn’t work too well on Ogres but they also prefer close combat, so we need to focus on creating shielder and melee ranks similar to the Romans. A circle formation will be used to prevent any sneak attacks. I will delegate Devin in charge of this operation, as I won’t be of much use for this battle. Joel, you have a big job for this one too. You’re probably the only one who can guarantee a kill on an Ogre with that poison blade. Here’s some crystals.” Bradley tossed him a few, “You guys know the plan, I have some things to take care of. Ben and Don fire from the walls.”
Squad 0 felt a bit strange, but they followed orders and prepared for the final mission of the siege. Bradley walked towards the corporation district, smiling the whole way. He started with USDC, walking in nonchalantly like he did any other time he needed to supply his group with more ammo, but when he walked into the elevator he hit the top floor instead of the basement.
He easily kicked in HM’s door and strutted right in. “Hey fucker, how have you been?” HM scrambled pressing his call button for guards. “You think you’ll get away with this? My guards have been training to deal with you greedy fucks!” Bradley laughed, “They may have been leveling up their skills, but their stats won’t jump that easily without leveling up.” Bradley got right up in HM’s face. “I’m not here to kill you, I’m here to make you a deal since most of my top soldiers are from here.” Several guards ran into the room and tried to attack Bradley with their weapons. Bradley continued dodging them, almost as if he was ignoring them, “You get to take credit for our escape when we make it to the outside world. The condition is that I get to kill all the other corporations in Detroit and we blame it on how they were caught off guard by the monsters.” Bradley quickly ducked, and knocked the weapons out of the men’s hands.
“Guards, you can stop. So I get to be the hero and I just need to look the other way?” Bradley grinned wide, “You get it. That’s all I want from you. I don’t want to have to kill a bunch of USDC guards while I’m out.” HM nods, “I’m in, I was trying to figure out how to continue working together, but luckily it seems like this can work out.” Bradley smiled and walks out, “Productive talk bossman. Stay safe until the end,” Bradley waved as he went.
Bradley then moved one building over, and then another, and then another, coming out more and more covered in blood. He killed every high ranking officer, and forced fealty to any he didn’t. Bradley’s smile grew bigger and bigger at each building until he left the final one. “I need to shower now. Ugh, Warm Waterball!” Bradley poured warm water down his body washing off the blood. “Windblast!” Bradley dried himself off, then headed back to Gate 8, where the final mission was to take place. He climbed up the ladder and stood next to Don and Ben, “How’s the mission going?”
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Ben looked at Bradley, “Did you go take a shower or something?” Bradley rolls his eyes. Ben sighs, “Seems like it’s going well. Don here took out some roaming groups of goblins and I managed to snipe some Orcs. All that’s left is about 10 Ogres. The problem is that they’ve grouped up. Joel managed to strike quite a few of them so now it’s just a waiting game.” Bradley nodded, “You two come with me, we’ll wrap around the wall and clear out any leftovers.”
Don nodded, “Should be easy, still have plenty of mana surprisingly. It looks like burning out your mana constantly and letting it refill boosts your mana stat.” Bradley nodded, “Now that you mention it, mine’s gotten pretty big. Mine’s at 35 already, what about you Don?” “I’m at 32, not too bad right?” Bradley nudged Ben, “What’s your mana at now? I need to know to upgrade your weapon better.” Ben blushed a little but stood confident, “20.”
Bradley nodded contently, “That’s pretty good for a non-magic user. I’ll swap out your crystal with a new spell here soon.” They continued walking the perimeter in the opposite direction of the main squad with their tedious battle with the Ogres. A giant crash came from the eastern gate, number 7. “Shit, how did we miss that?” Bradley grunted as he broke into a sprint.
An Ogre had crashed through the gate, and entered a civilian area. Its face was mangled and in disorder. “Is that the fucker I hit before? Damn, guess I need to clean up my mess.” Bradley sprinted forward and jumped off the rampart. He slid down the ladder, and began sprinting through the center of the city. Parkouring off of rooftops, he glided towards the sounds of a struggle.
As Bradley approached he heard footsteps running in the opposite direction, the sound of children too young and too weak to fight. He glanced below as he quickly darted over the rooftops seeing panic wash across the faces of hundreds of children. Bradley arrived on the scene to see these guardians who had no abilities nor proper weapons attempted to hold off the disgusting Orc. “If you do not want to die, retreat now!” Bradley screamed out, and checked behind to see Ben already caught up and Don just a little further behind.
“Strategy time, if I fuck up then Ben and Don keep shooting it in its stupid face or when it opens its mouth. Otherwise keep the public safe. I want to finish this fucker off myself.” Ben and Don nodded and Bradley ran in. “Hey big fucker, I see you guys could actually bust in here, but you were too scared after I beat the shit out of you right? Anyways, it doesn’t matter. I’ll fuck you up good.” Bradley grinned, “Withdraw 1!” A bracelet that had several crystals attached and several arrows around the wrist.
“Those big fucking wolves gave me a good idea, so I hope you enjoy it.” The ogre gurgled and charged at Bradley trying to grab him, but missed as Bradley had activated his shoes. He slid quickly forward and backwards dodging shots. “Sorry buddy, it’s pretty hard to keep up with a guy who’s speed can’t easily be figured out.” Bradley grinned as the Ogre tried snagging him again, and leapt up onto its arm.
Bradley sighed, “Let’s get this over with soon, circulating mana in your feet is hard.” Bradley quickly ran up the beast and dodged its other mangled arm by quickly hopping over it. He landed on the Ogre’s neck, where it tried to turn and bite him. Bradley laughed, “Fucking dumbass.” Bradley charged up his wrist launcher, “Just remember this hurts me too,” Bradley mocked as he slammed his hand in the open Ogre’s mouth and fired. Fire Magic Cannon. With ease. It blasted the head entirely off of the Ogre, killing it instantly. “Deconstruct! Deposit!”
Bradley withdrew out a bandage to stop the bleeding where the recoil slammed his arm against the monster’s tooth. “Fuck me, that thing managed to get me a little. What are the casualties Ben?” Ben brushed the shock off his face for the show he just watched, “Ahh, luckily there were only those injured from the door breaking and some strain injuries from the civilians wielding weapons they didn’t know how to use.” Bradley nodded, “Take anyone who needs it over to the medical center, I’m gonna keep patrolling. Don follow me.”
Ben ran off to scout out the injured and to guide them back, “Don I think that guy just wanted revenge before the end. We should be good, but I want you along just in case.” Don nodded, “I see what you mean, you punched that gross fuck in his face weeks ago. It’s a surprise he waited this long. It’s terrifying to realize that if we didn’t injure any ogres during the start they might’ve busted in from a ton of different gates.” Bradley nodded, “Luckily they were dumb, and as horrible as it sounds, the shock from slaughtering to being slaughtered helped out a lot.”
Bradley finished wrapping around with Don and made his way back to the fight with the other Ogres. “Seems like they have that about wrapped up, those Ogres look like they’re about to succumb to the poison.” Bradley thought for a moment, “Don, you have an aim-assist spell don’t you?” Don nodded, “I picked it up after reaching level 7 last week.” Bradley smiled, “Shall we give them some help then. Cast it on me.” Bradley reloaded his wrist launcher. “Cast it now!” Bradley charged up the device, “Target’s Heart!” Bradley saw the trajectories, adjusted, and fired. The burning arrows whizzed out, and after about a second, the Ogres all collapsed and Bradley got a notification about experience. “Look at that, I hit level 11. The others might be pissed for kill stealing, but just say that from here it looked like they were struggling, alright Don.”
Don didn’t respond, Bradley turned towards him, “Don are you okay?” Don snapped out of it, “Yea it's just my class changed after hitting level 10. I’m a Wizard class now, and I got a ton of new magic skills.” Bradley slapped him on the shoulder, “Good work man, apparently class-ups were a thing, where if you start in a generic class you can slowly work your way towards better ones. You’ll have to show me some of your skills some other time.”