The trio charged down the building and out into the street in front of their fortress-like home. As soon as Ray’s feet touched the open pavement a System message slammed into place in front of him. Unlike the normal blue ones, however, this one was one of the far rarer red messages, and the content made him start swearing up a storm.
{IMPOSSIBLE INCURSION}
UNDEAD INVASION
DUE TO THE MISTAKES OF OTHERS IN A NEARBY TERRITORY, LEGIONS OF UNDEAD HAVE BEEN RELEASED INTO THE SURROUNDING AREAS. UNFORTUNATELY FOR YOU YET FORTUNATE FOR EVERYONE ELSE, THE SHARD OF CREATION HAS DRAWN ALL OF THOSE UNDEAD DIRECTLY TO YOU.
THE FIRST WAVE WILL BE ADDED TO EACH SUBSEQUENT WAVE.
DEFEND YOURSELVES OR DIE.
{WARNING}
A THREAT TO THE DIMENSIONAL NODE HAS BEEN DETECTED.
DEFEND THE DIMENSIONAL NODE AT ALL COSTS.
{MODIFIERS}
SHOP IS DISABLED DURING COMBAT
TELEPORTATION IS DISABLED DURING COMBAT
ALL CREATURE SPAWN WITHIN FIVE TERRITORIES IS DISABLED
{WAVE DATA}
WAVE 1
COMMON UNDEAD REMAINING – 5712
UNCOMMON UNDEAD REMAINING – 112
RARE UNDEAD REMAINING – 0
TOTAL WAVES REMAINING – 15
TOTAL COMMON UNDEAD REMAINING – 685,440
TOTAL UNCOMMON UNDEAD REMAINING – 13,440
TOTAL RARE UNDEAD REMAINING – 18
{REWARD}
REWARD - ???
“Oh, we are so fucked. So absolutely, completely fucked,” Derrick whispered hoarsely. “What are we going to do Ray? We are fucked!”
Ray swallowed dryly, “That’s almost a million dead things coming our way that want to eat us. There’s only one thing we can do, we leverage what we’ve built, use our chokepoints, use Rivea to bombard literally everything she can see from the air, and fucking survive!”
He spun to Dave, “I want you to get everyone who can use a gun, bow, crossbow, or throw rocks staged where you can. Anyone who isn’t equipped to be a mainline fighter needs to help fight in some way, even if it's just distracting anything coming our way,” he ordered. The man nodded and sprinted off to organize who he could.
Ray saw Dax and Volka come up to him. They were geared up with weapons and armor and seemed prepared for the fight to come, at least as much as they could be. He was surprised, honestly, as he would have expected them to have already charged out into the hordes of the undead to fight and die a glorious death. Or something. At least, that was the impression he always got from Grok.
“I would tell you two to get all the main line fighters ready, but something tells me they already are,” he deadpanned, causing the huge Orkin man to bellow out a laugh.
“Yeah Boss, you got’z dat right. We ready to smash some head’z. Undead brain’z squish real nice,” Dax rumbled out with mirth.
Ray just shook his head, “Get your people squared away and ready. I don’t know how much time we have.”
The duo walked away to prepare as Ray turned to the still-stunned engineer next to him. “I need you to get the builders together Derrick. All of them. Build everything and anything you can that may help. Bombs, crossbows, ballista. Hell, sharpen some stakes if you can. Anything and everything will help out here. We need all hands on board.”
Nodding shakily Derrick took a deep breath and let it out slowly, his color slowly returning. “Right. Anything and everything. I… I have some ideas. Okay. We can do this.” He took off at a quick jog to find whoever he was looking for.
With his mind moving at what seemed was practically light speed, Ray moved through a half dozen ideas of what to do next before settling on finding Rivea. He needed her to be nearby and on call at all times until they cleared the last wave. He had a powerful feeling that those six rare undead were going to be more dangerous than practically anything else that they were going to face. The ratio was practically five hundred thousand to one. He didn’t think they were going to be more dangerous… he knew they were going to be.
He looked down when some movement caught his eye and saw Nyx standing next to him at attention. He was about to ask what she was doing when an enormous explosion from the very edge of the territory caught his attention. A massive plume of fire erupted into the sky in a vaguely shaped mushroom cloud, spreading out as it expanded.
Ray stared at it in shock as a hot gust of wind blew past his face with such ferocity he had to take a step back. Then it was past him, leaving only questions in its wake.
{WAVE DATA}
WAVE 1 – CLEARED
COMMON UNDEAD KILLED – 5,712
UNCOMMON UNDEAD KILLED – 112
RARE UNDEAD KILLED – 0
WAVE 2 INCOMING – 59:59
“What the hell?” Ray wondered aloud. His question was answered in the form of a large Aether Drake landing in the courtyard near him.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Rivea looked worse for wear as she settled onto the pavement in front of him. Her scales were scratched and scorched, she had tears in her wing membranes, and she was missing a tooth which was evident when she turned and grinned at him.
“Oh hey, look who it is. Don’t mind me, just going to lay here for a moment,” she said as she settled in and made herself comfortable as only a sub-species of dragon could do. “I took care of that first wave by the way, that should give us an hour or so of breathing room. The Basic Undead are easy enough to wipe out. They aren’t too smart and get bunched up easily enough. The chokepoints here should work well against them. Those Uncommon though… some of them have nasty abilities.”
He nodded at that. “Yeah, so I can see. Are you going to be okay? I… you’re missing a tooth.”
“Yeah. By the time that second wave starts I should be mostly healed,” Rivea confirmed, then her eyes narrowed. “Some of those Uncommon ones needed more than a fireball, but nothing a good chewing wouldn’t take care of. Unfortunately, one of them was a bit tougher on the gums than I thought it would be,” she ended with a hiss. Laying her head down and closing her eyes, Ray recognized that the conversation had ended, and he was being dismissed. Not that he blamed her.
Ray walked away, a bit non-plussed about the conversation. He was both thankful and a bit worried that Rivea had cleared the first wave. On one hand, it gave them an hour to prep. On the other hand, he wouldn’t be able to use the much smaller wave to test their defenses. No, instead he would have to be content with a larger wave which, based on his math, was more than ten thousand undead. Even that staggering number was only a dent in the overall number they would have to kill before they were able to clear the event.
If that was even possible for them to do in the first place.
The Shop wasn’t available, so he couldn’t spend any NEX on weapons or materials. But he had a ton of stuff laying around, including more than a few weapons and tools. It was time to see what he could do with {ALTER II}. Maybe he could batch-make some decent weapons for people? They needed more ranged weapons anyway. Crossbows seemed easy enough to make, and they had enough materials on hand.
Ray headed back inside now that the immediate disaster had been mitigated. He co-opted a few Goblins to help him gather materials and pile them in the main foyer. A few people got curious and crowded around, but he mostly ignored them for now even if he could hear their mutterings about the crazy guy in charge.
During his experiments, Ray had discovered a few things about his abilities. Mainly that the higher the amount of work that would be made up for his abilities, the higher the cost to use that ability for what he wanted. That also included materials. He could basically create materials out of thin air. The cost was horrendous, but he could do it. Likewise, he could create items and weapons out of thin air but those were even more expensive.
But get together the materials? Have the people who can make them on hand? Those costs plummet to basically rock bottom. A single crossbow prestidigitated out of thin air ran him a hundred Power. Period. Twenty crossbows from a pile of materials with the proper craftsmen nearby? A point of Power per weapon.
Naturally, he made a hundred, keeping a fifty Power reserve for emergencies. Ray had a feeling he would need that reserve. He also had a feeling that the fighting would last for much longer than a day. The later waves would be staggering in size and scope. The description of the waves and their numbers was a bit fuzzy on the math, but he estimated that if five thousand or so undead were added to each wave that would put them at just over eighty-five thousand undead for that finale. That was, quite literally, a wave of flesh that would be thrown at them.
Ray activated {MODIFY II} and grinned a bit to himself as everyone watching him gasped when the materials took on a hazy, fog-like appearance before reassembling themselves into a hundred crossbows. {MODIFY II} was far more appropriate than {ALTER II} for this kind of work as it changed the materials into a new form rather than changing their base existence into something else entirely, as the second ability liked to do. He found that {MODIFY II} worked better for changing one thing into another, like assembling crossbows from raw materials. Whereas {ALTER II} worked better for much larger tasks like separating entire buildings into their constituent components.
Assembling raw materials into a finished product as opposed to changing the entire state of one thing into another thing.
Ray gestured to one of the people standing nearby without even turning, his head pounding as it did whenever he used too much Power at once. “Get someone to pass these out to everyone fighting. I need to go round up ammunition,” he grunted out through clenched teeth as the migraine subsided.
Staggering to one side, he caught his balance and went to find Derrick. It didn’t take long, as he found the engineer as he was running back and forth between several different projects in the workshop. From what Ray could see there were dozens of crafters making bombs, spears, and anything else they could cobble together with the materials they had on hand.
“Wow, I know I wasn’t kidding when I said we needed everything we could get our hands on but this is a tad crazy,” he muttered under his breath.
“They are only doing everything they can to ensure that we survive,” Nyx said from next to him, causing him to jump. He hadn’t heard or seen her come up next to him, causing his heart to nearly stop. Nyx, in typical Nyx fashion, Chuffed in amusement as his reaction to her appearing out of nowhere.
After taking a deep breath Ray glared at his canine companion, “I’m going to attach bells to you. Hundreds of them. Everyone everywhere will be able to hear you coming from a mile away. I don’t care if we draw in every monster, undead, creature, or abomination in existence down on us.”
The dog rolled her eyes at his petty drama and continued on, “You are the pinnacle of drama. Now, you need bolts for those crossbows. They also need to be issued to people who know how to use them. I would recommend getting Verrick involved. The Ranger knows the in’s and out’s of ranged warfare.”
Ray blinked slowly as he took in that advice. It was good advice, and he didn’t disagree with it at all. He quickly grabbed Derrick’s attention and explained the need for the bolts. The harried engineer agreed that it was important and that he would get someone right on it. Then he recommended that Ray go and find Verrick, mirroring Nyx’s thoughts on the effectiveness of the Ranger in finding people to weild the weapons.
The only problem was that he had no idea where the Aelvin Ranger was, much less how to get him a fat stack of crossbows to hand out.
Glancing at the System timer, he only had about twenty minutes left before the next wave. If his understanding of the event was correct, they could expect each wave to have the first wave’s numbers added to it. He had to find Verrick, and fast, if he was going to get into position to help at all.
Searching around inside quickly and failing to locate the man, Ray headed out into the courtyard to look for him. He quickly found the Ranger and his people assembling by the gate leading outwards into the territory. Approaching them, he explained what he had created and what he wanted the Aelvin to do.
Verrick tapped his chin in thought, “Of course My Lord, I can facilitate this. It may take some time, however. Time we do not have and that the System will not allow us. I believe that it may be more effective to simply have the Orkin take them up. They may not be the most proficient with them, but it will provide ranged options for their mostly melee-fighting warriors. I will get this organized.”
“Thanks’ Verrick,” Ray said in relief as he checked the time out of the corner of his eye. “We have about five minutes left, please get as many as you can in place and armed. I am heading to the main wall now, hopefully, Derrick came up with some nasty surprises for the next wave of monsters.”
With Nyx in tow, he headed out the main gates and to the unfinished wall segment facing the neighboring hex. He wasn’t sure, exactly, what he would be able to contribute, but he was sure of one thing. Every fighting body they could muster right now mattered, and while they didn’t have nearly enough weapons and armor to arm everyone, they had more than enough people willing to contribute to the common defense of the territory. That would have to be enough.
If it wasn’t, they were all going to die and humanity would more than likely become extinct. Reviewing the event notification from the System as he moved, Ray took particular note of the information regarding the Dimensional Node. He still wasn’t entirely sure what that was other than it was incredibly important. He didn’t want to find out what would happen should an undead get its grubby hands on it, because he was only positive of one thing:
It would be really, really bad.