Chapter 56 - Seal the Breach
The left side of the semicircular junk barrier exploded into a cloud of wood splinters, dust and debris, the force of it so intense it sent individual cracked and broken pieces rocketing through the air to smack into the stunned crowd. Clusters of goblins were slapped to the cobblestones. The bonfire caught a half of a wagon wheel at its base and toppled over in a shower of sparks that forced the formation of guardsmen to scatter.
Splinters slapped against the material of my cloak as I spun around to shield Tiba from the storm, wrapping the two of us in at least cursory protection. Thankfully, I didn’t get any damage notifications, but it was as far from the origin point as you could get. Others probably weren’t as lucky.
The air shook as the turrets on every approach began to lay into targets in their field of fire. Too much. Too constant.
I stood up again, flinging the cloak to the side to scatter the debris that had come to rest on my back and turned to survey the damage.
The barrier on the far side was now a scattered mess of rubble, obscured by a slowly dissipating cloud of dust. In the middle of the cloud, a dark shape shook itself and stomped one, heavy foot into the street. Old pavers shattered under the force of it.
The creature was massive, 7 or 8 feet tall at the shoulders, almost as wide, blocky almost, like carved stones stacked on top of one another until they were the general shape of an animal except exaggerated in every way. Its front half was bulky to the point of absurdity, massively muscular, armored in grayish tan rock with lots of hard corners and straight edges that eventually tapered organically into a back half that wouldn’t be out of place on some kind of bovine animal complete with thick fur and a long, tufted tail. Its four legs ended in wide-based hooves, the front of which had sharp edges like shovels or rounded axes.
I squinted, trying to make sense of what I was looking at. The thing was a mountain in the front, a buffalo in the back, its shoulders piled up to dwarf everything else. I squinted, trying to differentiate the moving parts in the midst of the armor plating to spot the creature’s triangular head, almost comically tiny in the middle of all the bulk. The head, too, was armored, even the eyes, leaving only a small, horizontal slit across almost like a knight’s visor.
Everyone stood there for a shocked few seconds, taking a collective breath in dread of what was about to come. Our party had just been crashed by a completely different class of monster.
The thing shook its head, the armored plates clacking and grating against each other loud enough even to be heard over the remaining guns.
It snorted.
*BOOF*
The dust that remained in the air around the creature along with a good bit that was lodged between the cobblestones was blasted away, and I could feel particulates ping against my cheeks.
A long, mournful, lowing escaped the creature’s mouth as its body exploded forward, just this motion creating a miniature shockwave that I could feel in my stomach. Ancient sediment between the old bricks of the structures around us fell down in dusty trickles.
Goblins who had been assigned to stack and pack the food and supplies scattered to make way for the beast, abandoning their goods and trying to evade the oncoming charge. The slippery little green guys juked one way then another to shake its pursuit, but the creature could corner surprisingly well. It chose one out of the many goblins it had targeted and lowered its head like a battering ram. The goblin ran, tried to dodge, but the creature had him dead to rights.
I watched in horror as the monster closed in, got within inches of the goblin and...
The triangular head clicked and spasmed, turning itself clockwise like a tumbler in a lock, then retreated back into the armored plates, ending in a final *CLACK*
*BOOM*
An explosion without sound tore through the area directly in front of the creature. The cobblestones rippled with the force of it before giving way and flying out in a wide arc that slammed into the stone of the city wall and the locked gate. The poor running goblin was a cloud of pink mist.
Holy- What the hell is this thing?
I brought up my combat log, searching for the messages from the past thirty seconds.
Where. Where. Where. Whe- There!
Scourge-Touched Bray Knight takes 0 damage. (13 base, -13 Armored)(Piercing)
Scourge-Touched Bray Knight takes 0 damage. (11 base, -11 Armored)(Piercing)
Scourge-Touched Bray Knight takes 0 damage. (16 base, -16 Armored)(Piercing)
Scourge-Touched Bray Knight takes 0 damage. (18 base, -18 Armored)(Piercing)
Scourge-Touched Bray Knight takes 15 damage. (16 base, -4 Resist, +3 Knife in the Dark)(Piercing)
Scourge-touched Bray Knight is marked.
Scourge-touched Bray Knight is cursed.
Scourge-Touched Bray Knight is bleeding.
Scourge-Touched Bray Knight takes 0 damage. (18 base, -18 Armored)(Piercing)
Scourge-Touched Bray Knight resists mark.
Scourge-Touched Bray Knight takes 0 damage. (16 base, -16 Armored)(Piercing)
“Uh- Tiba! Get your people to high ground!” I shouted, not entirely sure what they would be able to do after that, but up on the wall was better than nothing. The thing looked too big to be able to climb or to get up the stairs to the battlements. Those stairs were meant for soldiers, not walking tanks.
I already had my sword in my hand as I started forward. I didn’t know what I was going to do about this thing, but I knew I had to do something. I had a couple more turrets in my inventory, but then there was the problem of the armor and-
“Ryan! Stop!” Tiba called. The way she said it pulled me up short before I could get very far. I looked back, sword up still and body still trying to carry me into the fight.
Tiba was pointing with her spear toward the collapsed part of the barrier the Bray Knight had just come through. “There’s a hole, Ryan! They come!” Tiba yelled. Even now, pale faces of the Returned were streaming into the breach, capitalizing on our distraction. Everyone was so focused on the armored nightmare buffalo thing, the other scourge were coming in uncontested.
I looked from the hole to the bray to Tiba to the bray and back to the hole again. Which threat was greater? Where could I-
A shovel sized hand slapped me on the shoulder hard.
“Go plug up the breach, Ryan,” Geddon bellowed, an intense glowing grin on his face as he slipped his helm down onto his head. “Once that’s done maybe you can watch us work.”
“Work fast and maybe we’ll save some for you” Samila said from behind the giant leori. She already had her helmet on and her shield strapped to her arm. Her eyes were locked on the Bray Knight with a hungry intensity that sent a chill through me.
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“Ready, big guy?” She asked.
“I’ve been ready my entire life,” Geddon replied, not even getting to the end of the sentence before he was charging, shield forward, sword in the air.
The armored monster hadn’t charged anyone else yet, seemingly content with rubbing its head on the bloody shattered ground where the goblin had met its end. It didn’t even seem to notice as crossbow bolts panged into its plated shoulders or even the lucky ones that sank into its furry hind legs. If the combat log hadn’t told me it was scourge-touched, the lack of pain aversion would have clenched it for me.
I spared a glance for them before I went my own way, wishing I could… do something for them, anything, but no. They knew the situation and had asked me to do this.
Shaking my head to narrow my focus, I ran toward the breach.
They were right. I was good at this. I could do this part, and I would need to trust them to do theirs.
As I ran I loosened my shoulder and settled my grip on my sword. The Returned were slowly streaming in, pale grinning faces furtively checking for signs they’d been detected by the defenders. Goblins came through as well, climbing over the much reduced pile of rubble before bounding off to make trouble elsewhere in the camp. There wasn’t a flood of them like I’d seen in the past, but I got the impression I was seeing as many of them as were available in the area.
There was that strategic thinking again. They’d sent in a battering ram and had troops ready to head into the breach it created. Had they noticed we were gearing up to move and decided to do something about it, or was this something else? What level of thinking was I witnessing here?
Somewhere out there, I had a gun down, among the rubble. It wasn’t positioned in the disintegrated part of the berm, but it certainly caught a part of the blast. Now it was missing. If I could get it back up, that would go a long way toward stemming the tide. The question was: would I be left alone long enough to do that?
I scanned the area, looking for signs of metal or movement hoping the gun was still trying to track and fire while it was on the ground, but I came up with nothing before my grace period was done. Then I was set upon by the horde.
Two Returned, gangly, pale, emaciated things draped in rags charged me on all fours, springing up to swipe at my face once they got in range. Their dirty nails raked over my cloak, grasped the material before their owners went in for a bite. I stabbed out with my sword to take the first one in the midsection, but it dodged back before I could do real damage.
The other was on me from my left, slashing at my neck. I blocked the strike with my prosthetic, spinning on my leading foot to shift into a punch that landed solidly in the middle of the undead’s face. Its head snapped back, and I heard popping sounds from the vertebrae in its neck.
Willing Edge [ 10 MP/sec]
The followup downward slash with my sword nearly bisected the creature, my blade slicing through the top half of the Returned from the collar bone all the way down to the pelvis.
My mouth dropped open in shock, only to get an intense sample of that all too familiar scourge ick.
40 Body. Need to get used to that.
The other undead capitalized on my sword being lodged in its friend’s insides (now outsides) and lunged. It wrapped itself around me in a tight bear hug from the back. The hold tied up my sword arm while it went to bite the side of my face. I struggled to get my metal hand around to peel the thing off, but I had no leverage or reach to get my fingers around more than its clothes. My eyes widened as the misshapen mouth closed in on my tender face.
It will come as no surprise to anyone that even the threat of something biting you in the face has a tendency to cause mild panic.
“No! Gah! Gahhhh! Get off!”
My mind was a whirling tornado of ‘No no no no no.’ I screeched, fumbling for something to use.
Hardened Defense [9 MP/sec]
Hardened Defense: User may harden one part of their body for 1 second for X MP/sec where X = 5% of total MP, increasing resistance to cuts, abrasions, burns, broken bones, etc.
It wasn’t a perfect fit, but it was all I could think to do in the situation to keep my cheek from being ripped off.
I’d gotten this new ability when I’d leveled up my Unarmed Combat to level 5. In my subsequent tests after selecting it from the menu, I’d determined that the part of the body that I could harden was distressingly small, about the size of a fist, but I wasn’t thinking about the limitations of the ability just now. I wanted my face to stay where faces should be, hopefully forever.
I didn’t have a hard time concentrating on the area I wanted to harden. I felt the mana leave my core and coalesce in my right cheek, cold and fortifying.
The undead’s teeth stopped cold, cracked, and shattered as it continued to try to maul me. It didn’t seem to care though. It bit and bit, getting nothing for its efforts but dental destruction until it was just chowing down on me with bleeding gums. It didn’t occur to the thing to stop and preserve its only effective weapons.
Breathing hard, I got a shoulder out of the bear hug then jammed my metal hand into the creature’s mouth, slipping around the cheek and getting a good grip on the bottom jaw.
Devouring Grasp [5 MP/sec]
Then it was just a matter of peeling the defanged undead off of me, far enough to run it through with my sword.
The light left the monsters’ eyes and it dropped away only to be replaced, immediately, by another. I dropped my Hardened Defense to preserve my mana and cut this one down the old fashioned way.
“Duty and mercy!” Sissa shouted from somewhere behind me. She’d joined the fight sometime during my face biting funtime. I was out of range for the buff, but it was nice to hear she was alive. Other shouts, wavering, fearful, didn’t sound nearly as confident as she did.
Already breathing hard after just a few kills, I advanced upon the breach until I was within about ten feet of the edge of it. Only a few of the monsters seemed interested in me at one time, content to send a few of their number to tie me up while the rest spread around the camp.
I was small potatoes, apparently. What a nice change after the last time we’d met. I counted myself lucky the face biting undead hadn’t ripped off my mask.
This position was as good as I was going to get. I needed to plug this if we were going to get this situation under control.
The scourge-touched clawed and snapped at me. I deterred them with wide slashes of my sword while I thought about what to do. My downed turret was nowhere to be seen near the wreckage. It wasn’t firing either. Not to mention, these things weren’t going to let me pick through the rubble to find it.
This is a bad idea. A really bad idea.
I was hoping to avoid this until we were good and ready to leave. Then again, the camp was in danger of falling apart right now. What more damage could I do than had already been done?
A lot, actually, but it was either this or nothing.
I slashed at an undead face and bound backward to get some space, flipping my sword into my left hand and using my right to summon the top part of one of my new turrets. The stubby cylindrical action, about the size of my forearm, was already loaded with multiple pressurized bulbs, and the Volatility charged ignition stick on the end of the turret’s barrel glowed menacingly at the tip.
Two more slashes with my sword and another step back, and I had enough room to position the turret in my metal hand. I wasn’t stupid enough to do this with my fleshy one. I was done being on fire.
I held the top half of the turret out as far from my body as I could possibly get it, and the corners of my mouth turned down in a flinch to end all flinches as I reached over and opened the pressure valve.
*FWOOSH*
A bright yellow jet of flame spewed from the barrel of the flamethrower, a solid line at first then dispersing into a loose, globular spray that covered a solid three foot cone of hurt. I’d just so happened to be aiming directly at one of the Returned when I activated the targeting card, so the programming just decided to do what it did when it had a lock on something. The yellow stream was so bright and hot I grunted and growled as I held on for dear life, unable to look directly at what I was doing.
I blindly waved the flamer back and forth in a wide arc, covering everything at eye level and below. The turret sputtered and spat as its nozzle passed over valid targets, turning on the juice when it saw something to burn only to instantly cut off when the nozzle passed over empty space. It wasn’t full coverage like I would have wanted, but… you couldn’t argue with the results.
The monsters went up like flares. The burning pex oil/alcohol mixture stuck to the creatures’ skin like syrup then popped and fizzed as it spread like fire is wont to do. The undead were especially susceptible to it for some reason, their skin going up like dry paper, their insides sizzling as whatever they were using for blood boiled away. The flames also blinded them, and they struck out at their comrades in their desperation to kill me even as they met their doom.
It was about as chaotic as chaos could get. My world became a raging inferno.
“Aaaaaahhhhhhhh!” A tortured, panicked scream escaped my mouth, more high pitched than I would have admitted to anyone back home.
I think I might have developed a minor aversion to fire since I’d last nearly burned to death.
Of course, the metal part of my body felt nothing, just the vague, semi-directional push from the recoil as the turret discharged its payload into the targets in front of it.
The skin on my leading leg and my neck stung with the heat, and the edges of my cloak smoldered. Meanwhile, everything in front of me was engulfed in sticky, liquid yellow.
Regardless, I advanced, waving my firestick in the general direction of the enemy. The disembodied turret head did the rest.
I was right in front of the breach, feet crunching over splintered wood, by the time the turret stopped activating at all with no targets in range to engage, but I needn’t have bothered going this far. When I finally looked, the breach, the berm, the building next to it, along with a multitude of twitching corpses, were already on fire, and the fire was plugging the hole better than I had any hope of doing with a fixed turret.
And the fire was spreading.