It wore on his nerves and took a lot of concentration, but Jerome was able to pass almost an entire hour while only drinking one beer. When he left the bar he breathed a sigh of relief. His Purpose had carried him through this time, but it wasn’t enjoyable.

Enjoyment, however, was not the most important thing today. He’d been right that no one in the bar would check his skills and find him out as human, and that more than justified any mental suffering he’d been through. He’d passed an hour in safety, and soon his army would reach the city.

It was about time to let them in.

Jerome reached an alley and transformed, noticing as he did so a slight sharpening of his senses.

Where were the warriors and mages who’d been chasing him? The city was big, so the chances of running into them directly were small, but how close were they, and how widely had they spread the search?

It had been an hour, so hopefully no one but security personnel (and the most dedicated citizens, and shopkeepers traumatized by their last death) would still be scanning the skills of everyone they met.

He entered the street and walked towards the back of the city, hoping for the best.

Fear spiked within him when he heard the bell ringing, but it turned to excitement when gnolls started running towards the main gates.

His army had arrived!

He ran the opposite way until he reached the wall. It was, as he had hoped, nearly free of gnolls.

Stone melted away under his hands. Placing his hands near the stone he wanted to shape made the process go faster, so he placed them on the receding stone of the wall.

He was almost through when someone saw what he was doing.

“What the hell are you doing?” it yelled.

“I act under the King’s orders,” Jerome lied.

“Oh yeah? What possible strategic value could there be in cutting a hole in our defenses? And your stats… you’re the human!”

Jerome channeled Crystal Overload, and after two seconds its body began convulsing. It died quickly.

Then a spear took him squarely in the side, knocking off 32% of his HP and causing bleeding.

Dammit. Onlookers.

Why hadn’t all the armed ones gone to battle the gates?

He transformed into a new gnoll to get rid of the spear (it dropped to the ground beside him) and restore his HP, then threw Ether Ghost on just in case anyone knew magic.

Four gnolls stood arrayed against him. None of them looked especially menacing, and in fact one was shaking.

He killed them quickly. One tried to run, but Hold worked like a charm to keep the thing from getting away and thus alerting others.

Then he completed his hole in the wall. It started as just big enough for one person to crawl through, but as he continued to be unharassed he expanded it so two gnolls could enter side by side, standing up.

Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

Teddy came first. “Jerome, is that you?”

“Check out my stats if you want to be sure.”

Teddy checked, then motioned the rest of the gnolls to follow.

“Is that all of them?” asked Jerome. Seventy or so gnolls had come through the gate, each with a ribbon of cloth tied around their arm as a make-shift uniform.

“Yes. We determined that we needed a large show of force at the front gates in order to properly distract the entirety of their defenses. It’ll look like we have an entire tribe up front, so they won’t suspect anything. We will make our way to the front of the city, where we will surprise them and distract their defenses while Krystyna and the others rush the gates.”

Aside from the allocation of gnolls that was close enough to the original plan. “Let’s go then.”

Working through the city was even easier than they expected. All the organized resistance was concentrated at the front gates, and those that didn’t ignore or flee from the invading army got killed immediately. Some who ignored or fled also got killed, but Jerome didn’t let himself feel too bad. They were the enemy, and they would respawn as more loyal gnolls.

A couple blocks from the front wall they started meeting more organized resistance, although it was put together quite hastily.

“Kill the cloth-armed barbarians!” yelled a defender. “They want to destroy everything we’ve built!”

Prisons! He wanted to destroy the prisons! Jerome only cared about destroying everything else insofar as it kept future humans safe.

Some of his gnolls started to become stuck, likely grabbed by Hold spells. Jerome wanted to sneak off to make a hole in the wall, but first he needed to even the odds in this fight by killing the mages.

The two mages were easy to recognize by their dress. Thank goodness for profession-specific clothing. Jerome hid behind a building with just his face peeking out and used Crystal Overload on one until it died.

He started on the other one, but his channeling was interrupted by a hard whack from… one of his own soldiers?

“Die, capital scum!” it yelled.

“What the hell?” Right, he wasn’t wearing the armband. “I’m Jerome.”

“How do you know his name?”

“Look at my skills, then go fight the real enemy.”

That was bound to happen again if he stuck around. Several of his gnolls were already ganging up on the remaining mage, so it was safe to go and open up the defenses.

Big cities were impressive, but they had one major disadvantage: lots of wall. Normally this wasn’t a problem, since the knowledge of earth-shaping magic was well-guarded and gnolls could only climb the inside of the wall, but in the current situation it meant that Jerome could work in peace, only a three minute walk from the main fighting, carving a huge new gate.

He stepped through and Krystyna saw him, then raised her arm and yelled for a charge. Half of the army went for the main gates, but the other half split off to run for the newly-opened hole. Good, keep them guessing. If the capital gnolls brought their main force to the hole, they’d face a bloody uphill battle.

Jerome climbed the wall to get a better view of the entire battle.

Teddy and his gnolls were getting pushed back slowly. This front they would lose eventually, if no reinforcements came, but it would take some time before they broke.

A set of defenders huddled with spears, filling up the widened area of the wall that sat right atop the gate, and another set of defenders were behind the gate. Likely many would be in the gate itself, a living barrier that his army would have to kill and then climb over. They would not win on that front, although hopefully their healers would keep the losses to a minimum.

Then he saw the most worrying development: fifteen warriors and five mages running towards him. A quick scan of their stats showed that their levels were all high single digits, around 8 or 9, and two of the mages knew Gaia earth-shaping magic.

Two of them would be able to close his new opening in the wall. If they did that, then their invasion attempt was doomed.

Jerome made sure Ether Ghost was set and prepared for battle.