For some reason, the section of the wall that was under his purview was left largely intact.

There were no breaches in it, there were a few large holes blasted through the wooden logs though.

Musket shots only though, no sign of any beamer damage.

Which didn’t bode well for Bertrand’s psyche, he didn’t really like the idea that he was at the top of the kill list for any adaptors.

And the gaggle of skittish and dirtied linemen that manned the walls, trembling like leaves in the wind certainly didn’t make him feel any better about his chances.

After letting out a sigh at the thought that he would be the first to drop dead amongst his rag tag team, he clambered up the broken wall and got onto the roof that held up his watchtower.

He was slightly slower than he usually was when he climbed up that ladder, owning to him trying to put less pressure on his right hand.

The cut he got from that jagged splinter of wood yesterday still stung.

After carefully pulling himself up onto the top of the watchtower, he unslung his beamer and started to keep watch.

Only unlike the linemen his gaze was directed inwards, towards the town.

After what felt like hours of this tense vigilance his mind started to wander.

Although he had gotten some sleep last night, it was nowhere near enough and he had to actively fight to keep his drooping eyelids open.

So he started to remind himself of how important vigilance was, he was one of the few skirmishers still remaining.

His caste was in short supply and if the zombies had their way there would be zero of them left.

The only corps that had it worse than them was the officer corps.

Seer those poor officers.

As far as he knew they had suffered the worst casualties out of any corps.

Less than ten of them remained, making the runners the de facto leaders now.

Surprisingly the bannermen had the highest survival rates, only one of them had been lost if he recalled correctly.

This knowledge only convinced him further of what the task forces had concluded.

Any modern day power would always have bannermen marked down as the number one target, if given the choice between an officer or a bannermen any sane soldier would choose to kill the enemy bannermen.

For while officers are instrumental in winning battles, bannermen are simply a necessity of combat.

Without them just a few people with a beamer could decimate an entire army. with hundreds of lives potentially being extinguished in an instant thanks to the rays of death.

How it worked was beyond Bertrand but he knew the basics.

You would give the bannermen a piece of the mana from your heart, this mana would then be fed into the shield, making it so that you in a way controlled the shield, so when you fired your musket the force bolt would pass through unhindered.

Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

Sadly It didn’t work for beamers thanks to them using mana cubes instead of their own mana, so only light infantry or linemen could fire from within a barrier.

The shield had one crucial flaw of course, it didn’t stop non magical projectiles.

Though what use were arrows against muskets?

One of them speared through a person's body, harming it greatly. While the other one ensured there would be no body left.

It had one other major flaw though. Decreased effectiveness against mages, to the point a single mage could overpower the shield of a regiment alone.

That was only for the most powerful of mages though, most of them would fail to even cause ripples on such a powerful barrier.

And from what he had seen the watcher subtype of zombie, although overwhelmingly powerful, was still only at the level of a novice mage. So it would be completely unable to damage the bannerman's shields.

Bertrand hoped that the zombies realized this and that the reason they didn’t target the bannermen wasn’t because they thought the watcher's magic would still work but rather because they didn’t actually have any watchers amongst their number.

Maybe they were actually exhausted?

The fact that not all of the zombies had been of the watcher or adaptor subtype implied that there were necessary prerequisites.

Just like how Tallion metal was needed to create beamers and muskets, there is only so much Tallion metal and therefore the number of weapons that can be created is limited, not limitless.

Maybe it’s the same for the zombies and they've run out of whatever it is that creates adaptors or watchers. Though this was all just Bertrand's tired musing, he didn't actually have that much belief in his own theory

Soon enough his mind drifted away from these grim facts and wishful hopes and settled on more calming and relaxing things.

Like actual good food.

He was sick of the same old soup every single day.

He wanted good food, he wanted them to bring back the bread.

Mouthwatering fluffy brown bread, created from high quality and well cared for wheat.

Perhaps with a side helping of biscuits, maybe even an apple or two.

Seer why didn’t they have any biscuits?

Was wheat used in the creation of military biscuits or something? Was that why they had none?

They might be hard enough to chip teeth and if you were at a river you could even use them as a substitute for skipping stones but they were still their biscuits and he missed them dearly.

Biscuits, bread, apples. What else did he want to eat?

Maybe a fish or two, some light meat could go quite well with bread.

Though he certainly wouldn’t say no to venison, it’s a shame that all the deer's went extinct so he could never have any again.

Well at least extinct in Francia. The nobles had overhunted them, paying mages hundreds of crowns to wipe out entire forest’s worth of deer herds.

And as was typical behavior of the aristocrats, all the meat went to waste, all the nobles wanted were the heads. Some pathetic upper class trend.

While their people starved thanks to their poor management of food stocks, they did further damage by wiping out rural villages food sources just to get some skulls to adorn their hallways, Seer he had even heard of nobles that spent more money than most people could ever earn in their lifetimes building massive elongated hallways just to hold all their trophies.

The deer they didn’t kill they imprisoned in their personal grounds.

And soon enough deer became a symbol of nobility. Some of the idiots even tried riding them.

A whole revolution later and any and all symbols of aristocratic power were to be demolished and destroyed, the raw materials like the gold used to paint their tableware were to be given back to the common people.

The poor deer were included in this statement, all of them being rounded up and slaughtered before being gifted to the common folk.

It was Bertrand’s and many other’s first taste of the luxury that the nobility had enjoyed every single day.

Slowly, while still thinking of all the wonderful things he wanted to eat, Bertrand lost the battle to stay awake and leaned more heavily on the shoddy railing.

And as dangerous as it was, his desire for sleep trumped his survival instincts, as he closed his eyes and began to lightly snore.