Retreat
Wiping blood and soot from his brow, Tom panted heavily from the exertion of fighting for such a prolonged period of time. Managing to give himself a small bit of room, he pulled a stamina potion from his inventory and chugged it as fast as he could. Relief washed through him as his stamina bar refilled, and he felt the strength to continue fighting.
Sweat continued to pour down his face, and his limbs began to feel sore, but he pressed on. He had to reactivate his Tattoo of Strength, which, fortunately, the System saw fit to make both the duration and cooldown the exact same time, as he had been fighting for over an hour.
Tom reflected back on all the times he thought fights were unrealistic because they were so short, and fighters seemed tired. He felt like they should have been able to fight the entire time instead of having rounds. Now, he no longer thought this as he continued to fight. That he was able to continue this long, he could only attribute to the System and magic.
Striking out at another pirate, Tom felt his muscles scream at him, and he almost faltered with the recovery. The number of lobsters seemed almost unending. Their ragtag band did not have the same luxury. They were being hard-pressed, and their best fighters were forced to remain on the front lines far longer than they should have when the others got injured and needed to be healed.
Tom had watched as several had gone down, used their Healballs, got right back up, and killed a lobster just to be killed themselves minutes later. He could feel the sights and losses threatening to tear at his sanity. Seeing them lying on the ground with sightless eyes or torn apart was almost more than he could bear. But he fought on for those who still stood.
Tom finally activated his Tattoo of life absorption. Because of the cooldown, he had been saving it for more dire situations, but he needed the refreshing energy now. He attempted casting a Dark Restoration on himself to see if it helped with the fatigue, and while it made him feel moderately better, it was clear that it was not designed to deal with the problem of lactic acid buildup in the muscles, so it wouldn't really solve the problem of fatigue.
"Hold the line! Keep the rotations going! Pull the injured back to be healed! If one of your brothers or sisters falls, take their place to avenge them!" Derek had been shouting, doing his damndest to keep morale up.
At times, he would even jump into the front lines in his power suit to fight back a particularly tough pirate, then fall back to help with the healing so that the others could fight on. The Mastadonians had been instrumental in keeping the position they held. Each one fought tooth and nail to keep the line, sometimes holding two or three positions across the front at once. Belik instructed the spellcasters on which spells to use where for the most effect while slinging restraint or disability spells when he could to give the fighters an advantage.
Amath remained with the wounded, healing them as often as he could and casting barriers from time to time to save any he could. Rularis was proving to be the most useful of all the Mastadonians though. Tom could feel the effects of the buffs on them as he sang songs of heroes from their world, sometimes switching to tales of foreboding for their enemies, which would debuff the pirates. This combination proved especially effective when they would overlap the timers on the spells, allowing them to press the lobsters back slightly before one or the other would end, and they would lose some ground again.
Tom couldn't help but think that the charge out of the shield had been premature, but if they had not, then the pirates might have just gone to another location to extract their resources, or Tom would have been killed by the overwhelming numbers being left on this side of the barrier without much in the way of backup.
Kiera and her team continued to fire down on the enemy, trying to give them relief. Inari had killed more than one of the pirates who were about to land a death blow on one of their number.
Despair began to sink in as Tom thought about waiting for the backup from the Federation to arrive. That could be days away, and they were flagging after just a couple of hours of fighting. Occasionally, Tom would look at the sky when he thought he heard something overhead, but it would either be his imagination or the F-35s flying by. They couldn't fire down on the enemy because it would damage their own troops.
Periodically, when the lobsters would begin to stack up behind a particular section of the line, one of Herbert's elemental grenades, as the guild members had taken to calling them, would be tossed into the gathering enemies and deal some significant damage to a group of them. This would give a small reprieve from the constant pressure from behind their front line, but soon, more would crawl over the bodies of their dead allies to continue the fight. The acid grenades were the most effective against the lobsters, but they came with a risk of the liquid splattering back on their own members.
Another grenade flew over Tom's head and into the gathering crowd of lobsters behind the line he was fighting against. He could hear the sound of the metal exterior tinkling against the ground as it bounced twice before it exploded in a burst of orange flames that expanded out to encompass a thirty-foot area. Screeching and hissing could be heard from the angry pirates as they were burned by the flames, their hard carapaces acting like a frying pan and cooking their insides under the heat.
His tattoo continued to fill him with energy as his health bar had been filled by the ability. Taking a moment to Eldritch blast at point-blank range on the face of another lobster, Tom swore as a claw clamped down on his extended hand and began to squeeze.
Crying out in pain as the bones in his wrist broke under the pressure, Tom stored his greatsword and equipped the lightsaber in a matter of a second and activated the blade. Hissing to life, Tom used the green blade to slice through the claw that held his wrist. The pirate hissed in pain as it recoiled from the pain at its severed limb, but the claw seemed to remain locked in place, the muscles frozen even though they were severed.
"Motherfucker!" Tom screamed at seeing he was still trapped.
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Taking a step back, he carefully cut the top part of the claw off, and the muscles relaxed enough for him to pry the claw off. Casting Dark restoration on himself, he remained behind a Barbarian who had taken his place while he seethed in anger. Staring daggers at the creatures, he deactivated the lightsaber and stored it away. When his wrist had healed enough that he could move it, he began to power up a spell.
Moving gracefully through the motions for the spell, he poured more and more mana into it as he let his anger fuel his attack.
"Step right!" Tom yelled, and the Barbarian moved slightly to the right, not questioning his leader's words.
Seeing an opening, one ambitious lobster moved through the gap toward Tom.
"FINAL...FLASH!!!!" Tom shouted at the top of his lungs.
The opportunistic pirate's eyes went wide at the end of their stalks, and it tried to scramble backward at seeing Tom's hands glowing. Thrusting them forward, the beam of energy burst through the lobster and straight out through the back of the group of pirates, blasting a hole through fifteen lobsters at once. Several others who were not quite in the direct path lost claws or legs, and one particularly unlucky pirate had been racing across the back of the group to get to a certain friend and had its eyestalks disintegrated, causing it to run around screeching and bumping into others nearby.
Jumping back into the gap, Tom reequipped the lightsaber and slashed out at anything in front of him, cutting through claws, carapaces, and anything else that stuck out too far. Unfortunately, they were still fighting a losing battle. Too many of their comrades were injured or dead. They made the pirates pay dearly, but they were losing ground.
"We have to figure a way out of this!" Tom shouted back at Derek.
"I fucking see that! We are trying to figure out what we can do. Our only option may be taking down the shield, but they will get in as well if we do," Derek shouted back at him.
"I have an idea, but it's risky," Belik called out.
"We're all ears," Derek replied.
"If we can take down the barrier and retreat to the gates, I can put up an Ice wall to try to cover our retreat for a time. They might be able to crawl over it, but it should give us enough time to get behind the walls and reactivate the shield. Some will be caught inside, but fighting some seems better than fighting all of them," Belik explained.
"I don't have anything better. Do it. Get the word out," Derek said.
Everyone around began to spread the word of the plan to those still alive. Once they were all prepared, Derek used his communication orb to tell Herbert to take down the barrier.
"Are you sure?" Herbert asked.
"We're getting overwhelmed out here. We don't have much choice," Derek replied.
"Okay," Herbert confirmed.
Continuing to fight and try to keep the lobsters as far back as possible, Tom began to attack faster and faster. The others nearby did as well, the sense of a plan giving them a rise in morale for a final push. A few minutes later, the shield generator turned off and the rainbow colors falling from the jet of energy blasted into the sky began to fall.
When the barrier was down, those in the back began to retreat to the gate. It was behind the ship that had crashed in front of it, so they had to run around the side, but they began to enter the guild base a short time later. Those on the wall continued to fire down at the pirates, but bullets seemed to have a lesser effect on the creatures because of their hard carapaces acting like armor.
As the front line began to slowly retreat, Derek called back to Herbert, "Reactivate it now!"
A few seconds later, the generator roared to life again, shooting the rainbow energy into the air, where it fell like a fountain around the guild, beginning to form the barrier. As the energy fell, the pirates looked up and began to surge forward with even more vigor to try to get inside the shield before it finished forming.
The Mastadonians moved to the front to push them back one more time. As they joined Tom and a few others, they began to swing their weapons in wide arcs to scare as much as harm the enemies into shrinking back.
"ICE WALL!" Belik cried out.
At one end of the wall, a large pillar of ice burst upward from the ground. It spread quickly across the front line, freezing anything it touched. Lobsters caught in the spell were flash-frozen in place, with some claws and antennae sticking out of the wall of ice.
With the spell in place, everyone retreated behind the gates, which were shut as soon as Tom and Bron ran through, bringing up the rear. The barrier had finished activating as well, and now there were about a hundred Lobsters trapped inside it, many still frozen in ice.
Flopping to the ground inside the gate, Tom panted heavily as he lay on his back. Bron took Onslo, Belik, Amath, and Huthu up to the top of the wall, where they disappeared over the other side to finish the remaining enemies.
"Well, that went to shit," Tom said, staring up at the barrier above them.
"Yeah. We made it back, but now we're trapped," Derek said, his voice filled with fear at their new situation.