There was no talking as they waited for either their fellow defenders or dreaded foe to appear, just determined silence.

Bertrand’s shoulder was starting to ache, he had been bracing his beamer against himself for a solid ten minutes now and so he was starting to tire.

Of course just as he started to relax the zombies attacked.

A massive thong of them, some hundred strong raced towards them, the pattering of all their rotten feet sounded like raindrops almost.

Bertrand was just about to begin opening fire when half a dozen adaptors sprung up on the rooftop of one of the outer fort houses.

He only just barely managed to duck in time as three darts sailed past where his head used to be.

Hiding behind the sandbags meant he couldn’t spot Blindie and see if he had been hit or not but since no one was screaming out in pain Blindie should be alright.

He would worry about the linemen and infantrymen but they were evidently not the adaptor's target.

Bertrand felt rather surprised and also quite perplexed, for the first time since he had first encountered them the zombies were displaying actual cohesion and tactics.

Sure they had done some ambushes but that was done with the oversight of a watcher and was something relatively simple to do, Seer even the most brain dead animals could do it.

this level of tactics though wasn’t exactly something mindless beasts were capable of, perhaps a pack of wolfs or something similar could do it but not the average animal.

Which raised a valuable question, why now?

Obviously Bertrand should be fighting rather than thinking about these irrelevant things but he couldn’t exactly join the fray when there were multiple adaptors after his head.

His weapon was better reserved for the horde as well, not for individuals.

After a lot of cussing and a few well aimed musket shots though, Bertrand got tapped on the shoulder and was told to “get up”.

He quickly stood up and without even bothering to check the rooftops started to fire his beamer.

He trusted that the adaptors had been wiped out, now it was his turn to contribute to the battle.

So while everyone was busy repairing their mana vein he was suppressing the zombie horde, the only real way to kill any of them was by keeping the beamer focused on them for a solid few seconds but even a split second of contact between the deadly ray and a zombie would force them back a few paces and strip flesh from bone.

It didn’t really incapacitate them as they would simply surge back forwards after they recovered their balance but it did buy the others time to get ready to unleash a volley.

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It also helped slow the horde down, as even if weren’t missing limbs or had shattered bones, it was still difficult to move with any degree of coordination when your tendrons were torn and destroyed.

After his mana cube ran dry Blinde took over the role of suppressor, sweeping their beam back and forth across the front ranks of the horde.

Of course soon enough their beamer ran out of power as well, however the two of them had managed to buy the others a little under half a minute to recover.

It wasn’t exactly ideal but they should be able to wipe out the zombies

before any of them managed to successfully scale the house, or diverted to attack another side of the inner fort.

A few zombies would survive the volley but they wouldn't be numerous to prove troublesome and would be picked off once no further threats appeared.

Bertrand felt a sense of calm come over him, they were going to be fine.

And then just as he had reloaded his weapon and repaired his mana vein, he heard a loud gasp.

He hurriedly looked up, trying to spot whatever it was that had caused his compatriots gasp but found nothing of note, apart from the horde that was but they were about to be wiped out in the first volley.

Bertrand looked over to his left to ask whoever had gasped what was wrong but everyone looked completely fine, Seer was he just imagining things?

The sun was setting and he had been running around and alert for hours so that was probably the case.

Just to be safe though he called out to the linemen closest to him. “You okay? Hear someone gasp?”

“Huh, what? Sorry, that was uh me, mana issue.” They answered back shakily.

Before Bertrand could talk to them further though the order to fire was yelled out, it wouldn’t be good to distract anyone so he just shut up and waited for the volley to be over.

Nothing happened though, nobody opened fire.

Instead, everyone was looking down at their muskets in a daze, some of them were even muttering under their breath.

Bertrand quickly pinched himself to make sure what he was seeing was real and was quite literally pained to find out it was.

“Seer, affix bayonets and prepare for melee!” The veteran yelled out.

Confused Bertrand did as they said and unsheathed his bayonet, affixing it to the front of his beamer.

Then figuring that he might as well soften up the approaching horde he got ready to fire down at them.

They were still a dozen yards away from the house so he didn’t need to strain himself to fire down, he just needed to point forwards at a downward angle and shoot.

Something which he seemed incapable of, he couldn’t shoot, why couldn’t he shoot?

Bertrand checked his mana vein to figure out what was the problem only to discover in horror that he actually had no mana vein, it was completely absent.

And judging by the veteran’s orders and everyone else's reactions it was the case for all of them as well.

The only thing he knew of that could have caused this was a grenadier's grenade.

If a grenadier could wipe out a bannerman's shield with one of their grenades, chances were it would work just as well at disrupting their weaponry.

Seer, he wished he had paid more attention to the other corps and their means of attack, all he really knew were the guns each soldier had and the basics of their role in the military.

If he knew what type of grenade had been used to disrupt their weapons he might be able to know how to fix it, but then again maybe not, everyone else was getting ready for a melee fight and surely if one of them knew how to fix whatever it was that had just happened they would yell it out.

Since no one had, that meant there likely was no quick method to bring back their ranged capabilities.

Bertrand didn’t have time to think about this though, the zombies were already halfway up the wall and rapidly getting higher.